HARE SHOOTING. 397 



shelter. When driven from their summer quarters, 

 they betake themselves to the woods, or lie con- 

 cealed under hedges or bushes, or on the steep 

 sides of brakes or cloughs where there is plenty of 

 cover, and sometimes in aftermath ; all which situ- 

 ations they in a great measure abandon when the 

 autumnal leaves begin to fall. Their next location 

 is in patches of grass, fern, heather, gorse, brambles, 

 or rushes, where they are to be found all the winter, 

 though the best place to look for them in November 

 is the stubble-field, where they will not unfrequently 

 be also found in October and December. In Jan- 

 uary they are often met with in the fallow fields. 

 Should the weather be warm after the 10th of 

 January, they will be found in the vicinity of 

 marshes, or in other low moist situations. In 

 short, to find hares, the hedges should be beaten 

 in September, covers in October, stubbles in No- 

 vember, parks, pastures, and uninclosed grounds 



swarm at the place where pheasants are fed, cannot swallow them : 

 and if you conceal the beans under yew or holly bushes, or under the 

 lower branches of the spruce fir, they will be out of the way of the 

 rooks and ring-doves. About two roods of the thousand-headed 

 cabbage are a most valuable acquisition to the pheasant preserve. 

 You sow a few ounces of seed in April, and transplant the young 

 plants two feet asunder, in the month of June. By the time that the 

 harvest is all in, these cabbages will afford a most excellent aliment 

 to the pheasants, and are particularly serviceable when the ground 

 is deeply covered with snow." * * * " Next to the larch, this 

 species of tree is generally preferred by the pheasants for their roosting 

 place ; and it is quite impossible that the poachers can shoot them 

 in these trees. Moreover, magpies and jays will resort to them at 

 nightfall ; and they never fail to give the alarm, on the first ap- 

 pearance of an enemy. Many a time has the magpie been of essential 

 service to me in a night excursion after poachers." Essays on Orni- 

 thology, by Charles Waterton, Esq. 2d. Edit. Lond. 1838. 

 2 L 



