MAESH BIRDS. 75 



who loves the merry brown snipe or his kindred, the wild 

 wastes of sighing rushes, and the pools that flash back the 

 daylight in their green setting, will find his delight in every 

 land under the sun. When the ice cracks upon arctic tarns 

 and the first fresh water of the year catches the red glint of 

 the early summer sun, the snipe and the plovers are amongst 

 those pools very possibly there is no one to molest them, 

 but that is not their fault ; and as Lap or Siberian move up 

 to the fells and spring time bursts over their country, all 

 these little birds are there already. There is no better 

 shooting anywhere, again, than in the tropics. The water- 

 courses of the Flowery Land, the rich rice swamps of Ceylon, 

 and the fertile plains of India have their Painted Snipe. 

 A bewildering multitude of other game of much the same 

 feather in Australia abound on the inland marshes. 



Nearer home I am much tempted to dilate on many pro- 

 ductive snipe-grounds, but the subject is too extensive. As 

 a rule it may be pointed out rough shooting is best all 

 over the Mediterranean and the lands bordering upon it. 

 just at " flight time," and falls off rapidly after a week or 

 two. But extraordinary sport is sometimes had amongst 

 fen birds from Constantinople and the Black Sea to Cadiz, 

 " while the fun lasts." Here, for instance, is a sketch of the 

 sort of thing they sometimes get in the neighbourhood of 

 Smyrna nearly opposite Cyprus ; the writer being a resident 

 and a good sportsman, his letter bearing a date in April. 

 "A long and unusually cold spell," he writes, "brought our 

 annual visitors in countless flights, to which the wholesale 

 destruction apparently made no difference, as the cold in- 

 tensified other flights, filled up the thinned ranks, until whole 

 districts were alive with cock, every little bush holding 

 a starved and emaciated tenant. 



" In Smyrna the streets were inundated with thousands of 

 cocks for sale at 3d. or 2d. each, or almost any price you would 

 name. During one week it is computed twenty thousand 

 were brought into this town ; one French steam-packet alone 



