2 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



count for our always finding, upon our return 

 to these places, nearly as many cocks each time as 

 the first. Part of this cover was low and marshy, 

 but not very wet this year. The grounds of 

 Maldonada, Cortiche, and Ali Tchelebi, are open 

 plains with a good deal of fern and oaks, much 

 like our English park scenery, with rivers and 

 streams intersecting the plains, along which run 

 narrow stripes of slight cover. 



" Catacolo Bay in the Morea is the harbour to 

 Pyrgos. Here the ground is varied. A good 

 deal of it currant gardens,* very unpleasant to 

 shoot in, the dwarf vines just reaching to your 

 middle and catching you every moment. There 

 are some wild, scrambling, small covers in the 

 hollows like the ' shaws ' of Sussex some 

 wheatfields and some undulating sandy hills, with 

 thick cover formed by arbutus, bays, and olean- 

 ders. The whole of this district Catacolo, 

 Pyrgos, and the Alpheus river furnished but 

 little sport this year from the great mildness of 

 the season. Most days were like an English 

 July. The sandy soil, on which grow the bay, 

 arbutus, and oleander, had produced in former 



* Colonel Parker, no doubt, alludes to the Zante, or Corinth 

 grape ; the well known little fruit which, when dried and im- 

 ported into this country, is familiar to all housekeepers under 

 the name of currants. 



