REMINISCENCES OF THE LEWS. 175 



all sports, a German and an English battue. 

 All these sports have I enjoyed and properly- 

 appreciated ; but for an old trapper, which I 

 am fast becoming, give me a favourite sport — 

 one requiring a remnant of the fire of youth, 

 tempered with the discretion of age — woodcock- 

 shooting on the open muir. 



Deer, bonnie brown bird ! I have looked for 

 you in Great Britain, where you were few and 

 far between. I knew you well in Brittany in 

 the days of youth. I have followed you in the 

 heaths and beech and oak coppices of West- 

 phalia. How I have seen you missed in the 

 cock-shooting parties in Ireland, when my fun 

 used to be producing a large bag, from " The 

 Professor " (one of old Tom's ancestors) — 

 retrieving and stealing other people's birds ! 

 And Kerry ! Killarney ! the little copses 

 in the mountain glens round the upper lake, 

 down which the birds used to come and go ; 

 the black valley. Coomb Dhuv, where I have 

 left bits of my legs ; the hollies and furze 

 bushes at the head of it ; the glorious Cahar- 

 nies, the beautiful Long Range, the dark 

 Glena ; the lowering Toomies, the grand Tore 

 Mountain, with its fine rocky covert; the 

 peninsula of Mucru^s, unrivalled in frost and 

 snow — 



