In the Neighbourhood of Salisbury. 



233 



that time to let any ' ' Brown Bird " of his size go away without 

 doing my best to stop him. However, in we went into cover, and 

 I had not gone far ere a " Brown Bird " fluttered up over some 

 brambles just in front of me. No sooner was he up than he was 

 down again, and my first Cock was safely bagged. Soon after a 

 second got up in front of my elderly relative, who missed him with 

 both barrels; but the bird circled round, and I marked him down 

 accurately between two spruce firs, where I had seen him double 

 down sharply from the top of the wood. My friend and all the 

 beaters, however, excitedly declared they had marked it down by a 

 watercourse lower down in the copse, in which direction it had first 

 flown, and my remonstrances, being but a youngster, were utterly 

 disregarded and ridiculed. Well, said I at last, "you go your way, 

 and Fll go mine, and Fll join you in a minute if my eyes have de- 

 ceived me ; 33 and after they had departed, pitying my self-confidence, 

 I walked up to my two spruce firs, kicked him up, and knocked him 

 over as he was just clearing their tops. And those were the only 

 two we saw that day, A short time after I remember surrounding 

 a little wood on Loo Down, on Dartmoor, and bagging twelve out 

 of thirteen Cocks we flushed there. Those were, indeed, days one 

 would like to have over again. But their very remembrance is 

 exhilarating, returning as I did from a three weeks' visit with eight 

 couple of Cocks bagged to my own gun, and having missed many 

 more than I killed. 



Scolopax Major. " Solitary Snipe." I have several notices of 

 this bird, kindly supplied by Mr. Hart, but have never come across 

 one myself in this district. He has one in his collection, killed by 

 E. Budden, of Christchurch, on October 1st, 1849 ; another was 

 killed by Laidlaw, in the Marsh at Christchurch, on August 9th, 

 1876; a third, at Christchurch, on September 14th, 1880; a fourth 

 was killed on October 4th, 1880, by Hart himself; while I have a 

 note of a fifth specimen, killed at Pewsey, on September 23rd, 1868. 

 It is not so devoted to water as the ordinary Snipe, preferring such 

 spots as the Jack Snipe more generally selects ; which bird, also, it 

 resembles in the manner of its flight, as it seldom flies far before 

 alighting again, nor does it make any sound when it is put up, like 



