182 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



the Severn is attached to the Castle, the whale and the sturgeon 

 when they come are its due. There are two decoys for wild- 

 fowl which answer completely, and which are also beautifully 

 kept up : but I have now to describe a sport which I have never 

 seen anywhere else. Immense flocks of wild-geese are in the 

 habit, from September till April, of feeding on some large 

 grazing meadows by the side of the Severn, called the New 

 Grounds, and the geese in their coming and going never vary 

 above a day or two, but are as sure to arrive, in small numbers 

 at first, as the month in the year comes round. I have almost 

 killed myself with laughter at what I have seen, when Lord 

 Fitzhardinge takes the field, on what is really a wild-goose 

 chase! Conceive his lordship, followed by a string of six or 

 seven men, guests and keepers, and crawling along in the mud 

 beneath the Severn's bank ; the flocks of geese being on the 

 meadows, and about to be driven over his head. They may 

 have to creep down to the bank of the Severn, under cover of a 

 hedge, in a field filled with fat oxen inclined for a lark, or sleek 

 and wanton heifers. The bovine attention all at once becomes 

 curiously fixed on the string of men crawling all-fours, and the 

 herd advance upon the crawlers, not quite sure whether they are 

 men or dogs. The last man in the line perhaps is a guest, who, 

 being a predestinarian, and born under the sign Taurus, 

 religiously believes, after his fashion, that his end is to be on 

 the horns of a mad bull and he is therefore horrified when a 

 huge Durham crossed ox, or one of the .old Gloucestershire 

 breed, with horns nearly as wide as the Spanish cattle, and with 

 points to them like the brow-antlers of a deer, leading on his 

 fellows, smells to him wonderingly from behind. The guest is 

 on the point of shrieking, to the entire frustration of the day's 

 sport, when the leading ox gives a short grunt, or playfully con- 

 strained bellow, approaching to a very loud or choking cough, 

 and with an unwieldy kick sets the whole herd dancing. The 

 grunt of the beast, imperfectly heard by the leader of the 

 shooting party, is deemed at once to have proceeded from some 

 one of his followers ; he halts, therefore, and turning his head 



