MARSH BIRDS. 83 



And acting everything doth never mark the net, 

 Till he be in the snare which men for him have set." 



The poet lias here clearly accepted as fact exaggerated 

 stories of fen men, based no doubt though they have been 

 on substantial facts ; for this " shore lark," when newly 

 arrived from the primitive barbarisms of the far north, is 

 both foolish and curious. Bright lights in the darkness of 

 night possess an attraction for birds often taken advantage 

 of for their destruction. Thus the dotterel was caught in 

 long fine nets extended about the marshy sheep-walks 

 frequented by them, of mesh just sufficient to admit their 

 heads, and supported on light sticks. Then when the birds 

 were settled for the night, and land and sea were merged in 

 equal darkness, only divided it might be by the lines of pale 

 breakers running in upon the shores, the dotterel men turned 

 out, some walking in line beating with their sticks, and 

 others clanking round stones together, and the drowsy birds 

 ran before them. Another party stood just behind the nets 

 with lanterns, and attracted by the glare of these, the birds 

 ran towards them, and were speedily entangled. 



The knot again, that bird that was to King Canute what 

 lampreys were to John, is found amongst the sedges, and has 

 been decoyed into nets by wooden figures, painted to represent 

 itself, placed within them, much in the same way that the 

 ruff was taken, the best season for their capture being August 

 to November. We doubt if a dozen a year find their way to 

 Leadenhall Market now, so much have they gone down in 

 fashion or in abundance. 



But I must not run through the whole gamut of unrecog- 

 nized game which lives outside the manor and beyond the 

 pale of an ordinary shooter's sympathy. There is the heron, 

 that spectral blue bird of preternatural sagacity, and the 

 bittern not yet quite extinct whose weird cry doubles the 

 loneliness of the swamps and wastes. There are coots and 

 moorhens which are wise enough to be equally unpalatable 

 and sombre feathered ; the grebes, quaint in manner and 



