336 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



these lovely birds were disturbed, but they got up 

 out of shot, and settled at the foot of a rocky 

 eminence, the only one visible. So I determined to 

 look them up towards the afternoon, when they 

 would lie like tops. Closing on to the " bheel," 1 

 wheeled the line round, and beating the thick scrub 

 close to the water's edge I put up several of the 

 common Indian red-legged partridges, and though 1 

 fired five shots I only secured a couple. Skirting 

 the "bheel" until I came to a very marshy place, which 

 looked favourable for the " long-bills," I went into it, 

 and had scarcely done so when on every side up rose 

 snipe and went off with their usual cry, " Scape, 

 scape." I secured a couple, but it was early in the 

 day when the birds are generally wild, so I deter- 

 mined to leave them alone till later on. I can never 

 resist snipe shooting to me it is the prince of sports. 

 Probably my fondness for it arises from my being 

 able to bowl them over when I can't hit anything 

 else. That snipe shooting is a knack is proved by the 

 fact that owing to long practice I can kill them 

 when I often miss such large birds as a florikan, a bust- 

 ard, goose, guinea-fowl and even pheasants. Snipe and 

 quail and such small deer are far easier to me to slay 

 than birds the size of a barn-door fowl and even 

 larger, but cJiacun d son gotit. 



Leaving the marsh and getting back to terra-firma, 

 I went through a portion of the rumnah covered with 

 fine grass about three feet high, very level and free from 

 bushes. Out of this I put up several doe antelope 

 and their fawns ; their forms were numerous, but I 

 desisted from killing one, as my permit to shoot 

 did not include the slaying of them. Some years 



