DECEMBER 249 



brought to bag, — of the three Wild Swans killed with 

 the old flint -and -steel duck gun at one discharge with 

 No. 8, — of the wire cartridge which stopped the Great 

 Northern Diver at an unheard-of distance, and of the 

 great frost when he was at it all night, cutting a hole 

 in the ice for the dun-birds and other fowl, after making 

 a rough shelter for himself near by. He once fell 

 asleep while watching, and awoke in a pool of water, 

 which the warmth of his body had melted. The hole 

 was full of dun-birds and the resulting shot gave him 

 eight or nine, some having dived under the ice. Of 

 course there is many a lament at the degeneracy of the 

 present day. " Ah, the winters are not what they were ; 

 often they do fare to be more like summer, and those 

 Dutchmen catch all the fowl the other side in their 

 decoys." But when was an old sportsman known to be 

 other than a laudator temporis acti ; and, whether 

 ducks be many or few, we may see much of interest 

 in these short winter days spent in the cabin amongst 

 the sand-hills. 



The finches which go trooping over the saltings 

 amongst the seeding aster and sea-lavender, are not 

 linnets but Twites from the north country moorlands. 

 Reed Buntings come daily to the dunes to feed on the 

 seeds of the sand-grass, and amongst the skylarks 

 one may sometimes detect the Shore Lark, which we 

 have seen in its summer home amongst the Lapland 

 fells. The warren at the back of the dunes has more 



