A BIRD OF THE FENS. 
129 
took very much to heart the draining of the fens in various 
parts of the country, and the cuUivation of waste lands 
generally, and left us in disgust, to seek wilder and more 
congenial breeding places, where the slight nest on the 
ground can be formed, and the four or five olive-coloured 
and spotted eggs can be laid, and the little Rufilings and 
Reevelings hatched, and reared free from molestation. 
Greatly disgusted, too, was the bird by a certain practice 
called RufF-catching, which the dwellers in the fenny districts 
persisted in folloAving, with the object of providing dainty 
morsels for epicures, who would actually give as much as 
three or four shillings each for their bodies. Here is Mon- 
tagu's account of the extent to which this trade was 
carried. After speaking of the difficulty he had in dis- 
covering the abode of the Lincolnshire fowlers, who lived 
then (in 1813) on the verge of the fens, and supplied the 
dealers, who purchased the birds and furnished the mar- 
kets with them, he goes on to say : — 
At this time we were shown into a room, where there were about 
seven dozen males, and a dozen females, and of the former there were 
not two alike. This intrusion to choose our birds drove them from 
their stands, and, compelling some to trespass on the premises of 
others, produced many battles. By this fowler we learned that two 
guineas a dozen was now the price of fattened Ruffs, and he never 
remembered the price under thirty shillings when fit for the table. 
Mr. Towns, the noted feeder at Spalding, assured us his family 
had been a hundred years in the trade ; boasted that he had served 
George the Second, and many noble families in the kingdom. He 
undertook, at a dinner of the late Marquis of Townsend (when that 
nobleman was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland), to take some Ruffs to 
that country, and actually set off with twenty-seven dozen from 
Lincolnshire, left seven dozen at the Duke of Devonshire's at Chats- 
worth, and turned his route across the kingdom to Holyhead, and 
delivered seventeen dozen alive at Dublin, having lost only three 
dozen in so long a journey, confined and greatly crowded as they 
were in baskets, which were carried upon two horses. 
Montagu goes on to state that the best time for taking 
Ruffs was in September, and to describe the modes of 
capture, into which we must not enter, as there are now 
very few RufFs to catch. 
This bird occupies the first place in Macgillivray's 
* Family Tringa^ or Sandpipers,' in which we for con- 
I 
