WOODCOCK IN IRELAND 215 



and short grass and silver-grey lichen, thickly strewn with light 

 brown larch needles ; the whole sparkling in the sun as his 

 rays catch the thawing frost. On each side larch plantations 

 or coverts of young oak, hirch, and beech, now mostly bare 

 in their winter nakedness, from which stand out in pleasing 

 relief bright green holly covered with red berries, young spruces, 

 golden flowered gorse, fir and pine-trees. In the larch planta- 

 tions the ground is yellow with a thick layer of needles, patches 

 of cover of brambles and other shrubs flourish here and there ; 

 in the coverts a dense undergrowth of heather, bracken, broom, 

 and blueberry bush offers a warm shelter to woodcock 

 "pheesant," as the Scotch keeper called it or rabbit. Bull- 

 finches and tomtits were very numerous in these woods, and 

 probably at home here for the winter. Above, the mountain- 

 top, now alas ! without snow, below, a very extensive landscape, 

 a network of high banks enclosing very small grass fields ; here 

 and there a ruined castle half hidden by a curtain of trees, and 

 farmers' cottages all coloured white and heavily thatched. 



What struck a visitor most when driving to and from the 

 shooting-ground was the small size of the fields, the great width 

 of the huge fences dividing them and consequent loss of ground 

 probably of no consequence here ; the never failing position of 

 the cabin at the immediate foot of the mountain-slope, one end 

 being generally built into it, in a spot where all moisture must 

 infallibly drain into it ; the deep mire and foul slush, the home 

 of wallowing pigs immediately in front of the door, and the 

 extreme ugliness, the dirty, unkempt and poverty-stricken ap- 

 pearance of the people, who probably would not be happy under 

 any other circumstances. 



The car rattled over the road which had lately been patched 

 in squares by means of stones thrown into the holes, passing 

 small two-wheeled donkey carts driven by women wrapped in 

 dark-brown shawls, who, by dint of violent tugging at the 

 animal's mouth, aided by voice and stick, managed to get the 

 much maligned creature slowly along ; the latter obstinately 

 preferring the wrong to the right side of the road. In the 

 morning the carts carried milk for the town creameries ; on 

 their return journey buttermilk for the family and its beloved 

 pigs; while the men were at work on the mountain cutting 

 gorse to be afterwards chopped up and mixed with hay as food 



