50 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



recollections of the gun are identified with it, 

 and I had become a tolerable snipe and woodcock 

 shooter before I had fired at a pheasant or even 

 seen one on the wing. The southern and 

 western provinces are more celebrated than the 

 northern and eastern, although I have had good 

 sport in all of them. When the party is nume- 

 rous, as is generally the case, a great number of 

 cocks are killed in the large woods ; twenty-five, 

 thirty, and even forty couple being frequently 

 the result of one day's sport. It is usual on such 

 occasions to employ a host of beaters, whose pro- 

 ceedings are conducted upon a very different plan 

 from that generally observed by the steady-going 

 assistants of the pheasant-shooter in England. 

 A heterogeneous army of men and boys whose 

 appearance might recal the description of Fal- 

 staff's ragged recruits at Coventry, each fur- 

 nished with a long pole, are drawn up at one side 

 of the cover. The guns are either placed at 

 intervals where the backward growth of the 

 brushwood may afford them the chance of getting 

 a shot as they work through its mazes for rides 

 or alleys are but little known in these wild 

 natural woods or else station themselves in dif- 

 ferent parts of the coppice, or on some eminence 

 that commands a wider range of view and 

 these are the most knowing ones of the party 



