162 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



vailed snipe and wild-fowl shooting; but although 

 a day's work in even the best preserves of Sussex 

 would not produce such a list of killed and 

 wounded as in some of the countries to which I 

 have referred, or require such self-denial, hard 

 fagging, and exposure to cold and rain, as in 

 others, yet from the varied nature of the sport and 

 scenery it frequently affords a combination of their 

 greatest charms, in as high a degree too as ought 

 to satisfy the aspirations of any keen and reason- 

 able sportsman. 



The battue, however, is almost unknown, for al- 

 though the estates of some of the large landed 

 proprietors especially in West Sussex are well 

 stocked with game, yet generally speaking, the 

 broken and irregular character of the country, 

 which imparts to it so many charms, forbids at the 

 same time the concentration of such a mass of vic- 

 tims in one spot as is necessary to gratify that 

 morbid love of slaughter which is supposed to 

 be the chief characteristic of the modern dandy 

 gunner. 



I will now proceed to give you some account of 

 our feathered game and sport. In certain parts of 

 the forest range the black cock (Tetrao tetrix) is 

 still to be met with. I have seen a few in the 

 neighbourhood of Crawley, but I am sorry to say 

 that the numbers of this, the only indigenous 



