THE WOODCOCK. 317 
fair shot within it, were it not that some of the largest rills 
(perhaps a yard broad) bordered with mossy turf, formed 
narrow vistas through the tangle, up and down which the birds 
when flushed would fly, giving some chance to a snap shot. 
We had no dogs—a luxury known to very few Indian sports- 
men, but employed beaters to find the game. I had never 
even seen cock-shooting in England, and my first day’s experi- 
ence of it in Nepal surprised me not a little. Iwas a good 
Snipe shot in those days, and, imagining from the general resem- 
blance of the two birds that a Woodcock must fly like a Snipe, 
I was much taken aback, when hailed to ‘look out, at per- 
ceiving what appeared like a large bat coming with a wavering, 
flagging flight along the little lane-like opening in the wood 
where I was posted ; but in an instant, ere I had made up my 
mind to fire, the apparition made a dart to one side, topped 
the bordering thicket, and seemed to fall like a stone into the 
covert beyond. These sudden jerks and zigzags, in the midst 
of its otherwise dilatory flight, are terribly puzzling to a novice. 
The bird alights also in the same fashion, dropping at once 
down as if it had flown against a wall. They were not 
numerous in Nepal, and two couple bagged to one gun during 
the afternoon was considered very fair sport. We found them 
only on the low spurs bordering the open valley of Kathman- 
du, on its northern side—on such slopes as were of the des- 
cription above given, looking more like the copses and hazel 
woods of England than the forests of India.” 
On the Nilgiris Woodcock do afford some sport ; there you 
have nearly bare comparatively softly undulating hills, covered 
with fine close turf; their sides and flanks furrowed by narrow 
ravines traversed by a streamlet, and filled with ilex and wild 
cinnamon trees, at whose bases grows a dense undergrowth of 
Strobilanthes, brambles, or a grass like bamboo, &c. These 
narrow strips of jungle, locally termed sholas, are on these 
hills the favourzte haunts (you wd find them in many other 
places) of the Woodcock. Broad sholas, over a hundred yards 
in breadth, are rarely beaten for cock, as these only fly about 
inside such and will not come out, and it is vile work strug- 
eling through the interior of these jungle patches; but into 
those which are from twenty to one hundred yards in width, a 
number of beaters and a pack of dogs, mostly nondescript curs, 
are turned at the top, and they are then beaten straight 
down, a shooter walking on each side. Then the Woodcock 
get well on the wing before you see them, and dart out from 
the trees flying pretty sharp, affording very pretty, if not diffi- 
cult, shots. Sometimes, if there is any other so/a running down 
not far from the one that is being beaten, they make straight 
for that; more often they fly a short distance down the out- 
side, and again turn in suddenly. Sometimes, if much pressed, 
they will work quite down to the far end before you see them ; 
