WOODCOCKS' EGGS A DAINTY; NORTH OF EUROrE. 147 



and fetch a good price; consequently the peasantry 

 seek woodcocks' nests to procure their eggs for sale. 

 But there are other reasons, for Sportsmen have become 

 more numerous in Great Britain, and generally more 

 skilful shots, great improvements have been made 

 in the manufacture of guns, and to which must be 

 added the universal system of drainage, which prevents 

 these birds procuring their food.* Pennant says that 

 in the plain part of the hills near "VVinander water he 

 saw numbers of springes for woodcocks laid between 

 tufts of heath, with avenues of small stones on each 

 side to direct these stupid birds into the snares, for 

 they will not pass over the pebbles. He says that many 

 were taken in this manner in the open weather, and 

 sold on the spot for sixteen or twenty pence a couple 

 (about forty years ago), and sent to the all devouring 

 capital by the Kendal stage. 



In Picard}'-, the French peasantry take a vast number 

 of woodcocks when they arrive in that part of France 

 by means of large nets that are fixed in the rides 

 and open spaces in the woods. One v/inter, while walking 

 through the market of Boulogne in the month of No- 

 vember, I often saw small sacks filled with woodcocks 

 which had been captured in these nets, and I sincerely 

 regretted that there was not some law in France to pre- 

 vent these birds, which afford so much pleasure and 

 amusement to the sportsman, being thus destroyed 

 wholesale. The price of a couple of woodcocks at that 



* The follo^Ting account of the quantity of game killed in Turkey, 

 from a correspondent, appears almost fabulous. The severity of the 

 weather had been unexampled. Two sportsmen, first-rate shots, killed 

 in three days, 402 woodcocks, 10 hares, 11 pheasants, 72 wild ducks, 

 1 wild boar, and 62 partridges, maldng in all 561 head of game. This 

 will be belieyed by those officers quartered at Ismid and its Ticinity. 

 L 2 



