"THE DAYS THAT WERE" 323 



quick, however, in finding and retrieving a dead bird, thereby 

 rousing the spaniel's jealousy, which often boded ill to the wood- 

 cock's anatomy. When cock arrive from the north, the time 

 varying with the weather, very large bags are made, but when we 

 tried the best " awful " the keeper called them places, especi- 

 ally those among the oak scrub near the sea and the dense covers 

 at the house, they were few and far between. They varied much 

 in colouring and size, the smaller appeared darker, the larger 

 more grey, the latter, according to the present belief, being the 

 older birds. Mr. H. G. Davonport, in The Field of November 

 10, 1906, says : " The young birds have the triangular markings 

 on the outer web of the first quill feathers, which disappear 

 gradually and successively from the base until the web is less 

 uniformly margined with very pale yellow. Dissection alone can 

 discriminate between the sexes." 



I brought away several dozen first quill feathers and have now 

 a perfect series to illustrate the above. The outer web in the 

 young is marked from base to tip with sharply defined rich brown 

 triangles ; these gradually become paler, the dark spaces between 

 smaller in number and narrower, always from the base upward, 

 until only a thin white or very pale yellow edging remains in the 

 old birds. 



The keeper here for many years thought out everything he 

 wished to say in Gaelic and then gave the best translation he was 

 capable of; far too polite to air his own opinion, he was annoy ingly 

 anxious to fall in with everybody else's. He also had a puzzling 

 way when giving the direction he wished us to take. The natural 

 supposition that this would be that of his extended arm and hand 

 was always wrong; the fingers, which one could never see but 

 which were curved at various angles, gave the desired course. It 

 always reminded me of a friend, now dead, alas ! provided with 

 a curiously crooked fore-finger, which, broken at cricket, had very 

 badly mended. This he would always use as a pointer, and 

 naturally it was impossible to read his wishes, for the damaged 

 digit pointed all round the compass. 



Here, also, one heard the usual remark that woodcock never 

 now were as numerous as in the old days, which indeed seems 

 confirmed by the following extract from Leland's " Collectanea " 

 quoted in Wheater's " History of Sherburn and Cawood." In 

 Cawood Castle took place, on January 16, 1566, " the great 



