SHOOTING IN NEW FOREST 267 



streams and pools in the wide coverts of New 

 Forest. These little collections of refugees would 

 afford me very excellent sport about mid-day, as 

 they rose in little bunches in the shelter of the 

 thick covert. 



There were various ponds and pools in the 

 manors in and around the Forest where wild 

 fowl notably teal congr ^ated, and were pre- 

 served and fostered and fed till they became 

 quite at home. Then on certain days guns 

 would be assembled, and a heavy shoot would 

 take place. 



My good neighbours would often notify me 

 of the day when they proposed to shoot their 

 ponds mainly, as I like to think, from good- 

 nature and kindly feeling towards myself, and 

 also because by my disturbance of the woody 

 refuges they were driven back again to their 

 old haunts, and the flock of wild fowl using the 

 ponds was kept together as to its remnants at 

 any rate. 



There was no place where fowl, at one time 

 (for they are capricious in their haunts) con- 

 gregated more thickly than on the mill-pond at 

 Minstead Manor. I have been present when 

 one hundred fowl have been brought down in 

 about twenty -five minutes. It is a pretty shoot. 

 First, at the start, comes the great rise of 500 



