1 68 WILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



One reads a great deal of nonsense written by- 

 people ignorant of their subject about wholesale 

 slaughter and extermination of the fowl. They do 

 not know how few fowl, in proportion to the numbers 

 that visit our shores, are shot, nor of the dangers 

 and hardships of going after them. Fowling on the 

 tide for Brents calls for not only pluck and coolness, 

 but requires great endurance as well. I will give 

 a brief sketch of one such night of " wholesale 

 slaughter " {sic). 



Snow lies everywhere. Where it has not drifted, 

 every spot is covered with it for two feet or more 

 in depth. Where it has drifted, the thatched, low 

 cottages of the hamlet are snowed up to their very 

 eaves. Where the tide has flowed up over the mud- 

 flats there shows a great dark plain, while all around 

 is covered by a grey pall of snow, looking weird in 

 the sickly, foggy moonlight. The fowlers say that 

 either more snow is going to fall or a change is 

 coming — "One or t'other" they say it will be. 

 Those dim masses on the rising grounds in the 

 distance are large military establishments, and that 

 huge object which seems to block the mouth of the 

 river which here meets the tide is a Government 

 dockyard. 



The news has spread, as it does somehow or other 

 get spread in these small places, that a couple of 

 fowlers, who have for a time located themselves in 

 this out-of-the-world spot, are going out for a shot 

 when the tide flows. Such a rumour is enough to 

 make all the shore-shooters and all the fishermen 



