GEOUSE MOORS AND DEEE FORESTS. 265 



with a bitterness, however, which suggests the measure to 

 be singularly effective and useful in their part of the 

 country ! Then the flapper shooter says his young friends 

 are strong on the wing and over-experienced on the thres- 

 hold of August. He would like to get at them by the 

 middle of July at the latest. The big gunner, in his punt 

 off the Ipswich or Harwich flats, cannot understand why 

 Parliament should cork up his four-bore just as the spring 

 flight is on, and the ruffs and reeves are gambolling in an 

 enticing manner on the marshes, and long strings of duck 

 and wimbrel pass continually overhead. He argues without 

 much logic that as they are going northward to "the 

 foreigners " he ought to be allowed to take all he can reach 

 before their departure. But far otherwise thinks the owner 

 of decoy and snipe bogs. If all the birds do go northward 

 in the spring he says it is chiefly owing to that hideous 

 banging of seafowl ordnance going on " off Harwich." 

 There was amorousness in the quack of the mallards and 

 the bleating of the fen snipe even before the sallow buds 

 were silky in early March, or the king-cups had put out 

 a single new leaf to try the temperature of " the month that 

 looks two ways." The better plan, according to this authority, 

 would be to begin the close time with February and 

 especially as regards everything which puntsmen like to 

 shoot. Mr. Morris, again, wants the gulls protected until 

 September, and brings a strong case in his favour ; but 

 'Arry, on the other hand, particularly desires them to be free 

 food for powder and his borrowed gun when his August 

 holiday turns him out to his own inclinations. 



The Leadenhall poultrymen comfort themselves in know- 

 ing they may sell game from over seas when the sale of the 

 same birds taken in Great Britain is forbidden. But this 

 irks the tender ornithological compassion of men like the 

 late Frank Buckland. On one occasion he wrote : " I have 

 been consulted on a case which in the spring affects most 

 seriously the supply of food to the public namely, the 



