172 WITHIN AN HOUR OF LONDON TOWN. 



regards fowling have been a bone of contention 

 from the very earliest times. The monks of old 

 had trouble over it in our fen-lands, and the matter 

 is not quite fought out yet. Some nonsense has 

 been written lately about the cruelty that must 

 exist in the natures of all those who indulge in 

 sport. In my humble opinion, to be a sportsman, 

 in the true sense of the term, you must be a man 

 first. The hunting instinct has been the greatest 

 blessing to England, for with it goes the spirit of 

 adventure. 



Before I venture to speak about fowling from our 

 fine modern punts, which carry guns with all the 

 latest improvements, let me mention one instance 

 out of many hundreds, showing what vast hordes 

 of fowl have congregated close to London, com- 

 paratively speaking, for Essex cannot be said to 

 be far from it. They are plentiful enough there 

 yet. Folkard, in his * Wild Fowler,' written in 

 1875, has stated and I have heard the same fact 

 scores of times before I left the marshlands on the 

 opposite shore that on one or two occasions 

 within present memory the capture of pochards 

 or dun birds has been so great that a waggon with 



