170 COCK SHOOTING. 



difference, however. The cock must have 

 bushes to hide in. A splendid day's sport may 

 be had by a man who is independent enough 

 to take the field alone during the white, crisp, 

 snowy weather, when the air is as reviving as a 

 draught of champagne. As the woodcock seems 

 averse after his one great feat of locomotion to 

 repeated displays of the same kind, even under 

 stress of weather, he prefers to seek for his 

 livelihood as close to his familiar haunts as he 

 can. A glen in which the sun is shining, and 

 through which a gurgling stream, yet unbound 

 by the frost, struggles through tangled branches 

 of thorn interspersed with holly ; a hedge 

 crusted with warm moss and overhung with 

 dwarf trees ; patches of gorse from which the 

 snow has thawed in half-reclaimed lowlands- 

 such are a few of the localities into which the 

 cock goes when the thermometer is at freezing 

 point. And at such times it is necessary to 

 beat very closely indeed, so that we must 

 qualify the assertion about the pleasures of 

 complete solitariness during the ramble ; a boy 

 with a stick is all that will be required, and 

 wherever he cannot go tell him to pitch a 



