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How is this to be accounted for ? Some sportsmen have 

 supposed that sudden alarm or fright will empower 

 animals and birds to withhold their scent; with the 

 human race it has the contrary effect. Providence, in 

 my opinion, as I before stated, has enabled game, when 

 sitting on the nest, to withhold their scent against their 

 enemies ; and this I know to be the general opinion of 

 gamekeepers, amongst whom you sometimes find very 

 shrewd and intelligent men. I fully agree with what 

 this gentleman says regarding vermin that has been 

 trapped and is alive. The alarm occasioned by coming 

 suddenly on them is productive of an odour not re- 

 sembling in the least the otto of roses ; even a house- 

 cat when taken out of a trap diffuses a most disagreeable 

 smell. 



In August 1802, 1 was grouse-shooting in Carmarthen- 

 shire, having taken up my quarters at a small inn in at 

 that time the obscure village of Lampeter. Finding 

 the grouse sometimes very scarce in the hills in this 

 district, I occasionally had recourse to snipe shooting, 

 as those birds of passage remain during the spring and 

 summer, and breed on some of the morasses on the 

 heights. One of my dogs, whilst looking out for snipes, 

 made a point with his nose almost in a tuft of long 

 sedgy grass, and after waiting a little while expecting a 

 snipe to rise, I approached the spot, to endeavour to 

 find out what the dog was pointing, and concluded at 

 last that it must be a mouse ; but, on examining closely 

 the high grass, I perceived, lying close on the ground, 

 a young snipe, just pen-feathered, which I took up, and 

 certainly he made a very droll appearance, with his bare 

 roimd head, large eyes, and long bill. I merely mention 



