20 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



gets almost up to me when he rises and tries to dodge ; back but is 

 bowled over with a lucky shot just in time. 



So on through the strip with constant shots all through its length 

 and, curiously enough, in this bit of cover we keep putting up the birds 

 three and four almost together with intervals in which we put up 

 none at all. The taller trees are scanty and the bracken very withered 

 so the cock are all hiding under the many clumps of holly bushes and 

 brambles at the very edge of the swampy pieces. The shooting is easy 

 in the comparative absence of the taller trees and we find when we get 

 through our beat that H. has nine birds to my ten and that our host 

 has beaten us both with 12 cock and a pheasant. 



We do not have such luck, however, with our next beat which is a 

 pine wood with very little under-growth and no water. Here we put 

 up three or four cock only and get but one, though we add a couple of 

 rabbits and one more pheasant to the general stock. Leaving this 

 wood we work through a scarp facing the sea and covered with 

 bracken, gorse and brambles whilst every few yards a cheerful little 

 cascade goes tumbling down into the sea below us. Both rabbits and 

 cock are very numerous here, but the walking is terrible and, having 

 but one arm both to shoot and climb with, I frighten a great many 

 more birds and rabbits than I kill, indeed I emerge the other end ot 

 the scarp with but one cock and two rabbits, a result exactly doubled 

 both by H. and B., the latter adding a brace of partridge out of a cove)' 

 put up on the fields above him by some labourers. 



Yet another scarp succeeds this one, but the walking is better and 

 out of the 7 birds collected here I claim three having only missed one. 

 This beat brings us up to the farm where we have lunch, a Welsh 

 lunch of cold birds, apple tart and Devonshire cream washed down 

 with draught beer. Half an hour more for a smoke and oiir host 

 makes us turn out again to take full advantage of a day's shooting of a 

 kind that does not come too often. 



Walking down the lane a small boy says he has seen a cock pitch 

 in some brambles by a pond in the field to our right and, sure enough, 

 the dogs turn him out and B. adds him to the fast-swelling bag. From 

 here we make for three small spinnies divided from -one another by 

 about a hundred yards or so and themselves covering Only two or three 

 acres each. Our host and B. each take one corner and send me on 

 ahead to shoot the gaps ' and very pretty shooting I get; They have 



