3 i6 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



surpassed the population of the west of Ireland. On a map 

 duly coloured to represent density of animal population, 

 Norfolk would take on a very deep hue and Westmorland 

 or Merioneth or Leitrim would pale. This is the more 

 curious as moisture is favourable to insects, and birds 

 multiply round standing water and by the side of streams. 

 The wet makes some of the western islands almost poisonous 

 to domestic animals in winter. The traveller from Skye in 

 October will find it quite difficult to escape from the island 

 in any comfort by reason of the herds of sheep with which 

 every passenger steamer is at this season crowded. The 

 sheep pine and die if left on the island during the winter 

 months ; and this is due less to the food than to the climate 

 and the untempered winds blowing salt off the Atlantic. 



It is not well to push a theory to its utmost. The west 

 is of course the special home of some of the birds, who find 

 kindly open lands not offered by the east. The great 

 westerners are snipe and woodcock. In September you 

 may find wisps of snipe almost within the London suburbs. 

 Along the water meadows of the Wey, within twenty miles 

 of London, the writer has seen more snipe than at any winter 

 expeditions in the extremest west. You may flush there 

 wisps of sixty to eighty birds. They get up like finches in 

 the stackyard. At any other little marshes, old brick pits, or 

 rush-beds, scattered about the counties, you may at this 

 season find some odd snipe, a few of which have nested in 

 the country. But later, when winter comes, the birds are 

 gone. In January or February you may walk about eastern 

 fenlands, where the snipe abounded in November, and never 

 find a bird. They are all away west, as far west as they can 

 fetch. One winter day, on a South Welsh moor, you put up 

 snipe every twenty yards or so ; and local sportsmen have 

 shot fifty couple. The next nine-tenths are gone across the 



