76 BEITANNY AND THE CHASE. 



toiling for a week, they have walked home with their 

 three or four brace of birds. Of course, to the residents, 

 the addition of sporting is a great boon ; even if it be 

 poor, it helps them to pass the time, and keeps up their 

 health ; but for a sportsman to go on purpose for the 

 sport, would be ridicuJous. It is amusing to watch the 

 progress from hope to disappointment, and from that to 

 abuse in the new comers. At first they survey the coun- 

 try, and, judging by English rules, they feel they are all 

 right. Tine tracts of wood, a fair amount of stubble, 

 patches of turnips, large fields of mixed gorse and fern, 

 marshes for snipes, coppices for cocks ; oh ! they have not 

 done amiss in coming to Britanny. Perhaps their thin- 

 skinned, high-bred pointers may not like the gorse at first, 

 but blood iDill tell, and they will soon get used to it. Per- 

 haps also their tackle and toggery may be rather light for 

 the country, but it is but getting other. So they turn out. 

 First to the stubbles, and a fine range of them too ; plenty 

 of birds in them, not a doubt of it. No. 1. a failure, 

 ditto No. 2., and so on with the rest ; very curious, some 

 one must have been over the ground before them, or the 

 birds must have been disturbed. But the guide mo- 

 tions with his hand, and they steal on ; what has he got ; 

 set a hare probably. They reach him, and he shows 

 them with great glee a feather! they cannot say there 

 is no game in the country. The stubbles yield nothing, 

 and they will try the gorse or landes ; very good ; rare 

 stuff in the middle of the day ; and away they go, to walk 

 into, as they imagine, a low cut English gorse. They 

 arrive at a dark mass of green as solid as a wall, and five 



