SPORT ON MARSH AND FORESHORE 265 



finish of the drive greatly exceeded the sum total of my 

 bag. 



The mud-soiled beaters now approached, and, with 

 their long thigh-boots pulled well up, they assisted the 

 dogs in gathering the dead and cripples from the dense 

 sedges. It was still quite early, and our host suggested 

 that an extensive marsh, overgrown with rough ground 

 cover in the shape of bents and dry rushes, should be 

 tried for partridges and hares. Thinking it not impro- 

 bable that I might fall in with a few duck and snipe 

 among the drains of the saltings, I wandered off on my 

 own account, and, taking a well broken old retriever 

 bitch with me, crossed over the sea-wall and started to 

 walk across the drain-intersected salt-marshes, up-wind, 

 towards what is locally known as Broom Point. 



I had not proceeded far on my solitary beat, when my 

 four-footed companion flushed a full snipe from a deep 

 gully, which wormed its way through the salts and down 

 to a wide tidal creek. The snipe rose within easy shot 

 of me, and went screwing and scaping marsh wards. 

 I missed clean with my first barrel, but managed to 

 drop the bird with the left just as it topped the wall, 

 and although, like many other dogs, old " Jet " was by 

 no means fond of retrieving snipe, she brought the bird 

 to hand with scarcely a feather ruffled. The report of 

 my gun set a-wing a spring of eleven teal, which I marked 

 down into a gully running at right angles to the sea-wall 

 at a point about a quarter of a mile further along the 

 saltings. 



Carefully marking a stunted thornbush growing on 

 a sea-wall, and from which I knew that I should be able 

 to command full view of the gully wherein the teal had 



