MAESH BIRDS. 79 



when I first began to shoot, now some thirteen or fourteen 

 seasons ago. Of course, if you go in for improving the land, 

 you improve the snipe out of it. Within a couple of miles 

 of this there was a swamp with a river running through it, 

 where in frost you could get your ten couple of snipe, with 

 the chance of a duck or a mallard in the day. Now you 

 would not see a snipe in it. An improving proprietor got 

 hold of it, sunk the river, drained and sub-drained the swamp, 

 and in two or three years had turnips and oats growing 

 where I have often sunk below my hips shooting duck and 

 snipe. Woodcock, I think, are getting scarcer every year, 

 but not snipe ; the only difference I see in the latter is that 

 they seem to be wilder than formerly. This may be fancy 

 on my part ; I accounted for it by the mildness of the winters. 

 This, however, I can say, that over the same ground I have 

 got as good bags of snipe in recent seasons as I ever got in 

 previous ones." 



This exactly illustrates what I mean. " Of course, if you 

 go in for improving the land, you improve the snipe out of it," 

 but otherwise " over the same ground as good a bag of snipe 

 is to be got now as in any previous season." I look upon the 

 natural supply of snipe as practically inexhaustible, a result 

 due to the infinite diffusion of the species and the vastness 

 of their breeding ground. Here we shall never breed any 

 adequate supply for the ever rising enthusiasm of the sports- 

 men of mud boots and retrievers, but from abroad we shall 

 have a constant and unfailing fund limited only by the 

 capacity of our counties to harbour and feed the strangers. 

 " And both those capacities are getting narrower and narrower 

 every day ! " observes the pessimist. 



There can be no doubt there is much truth in this. When 

 King Alfred hid amongst the osier forests of Norfolk, and 

 there was a current superstition that all dwellers near the 

 Wash were web-footed, snipe must have found our littoral a 

 very Elysium. To go no further back than the time of our 

 grandfathers, there still live men who shot snipe amongst 



