THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
on wildfowl and fine collection of British birds at Brighton are well known; 
there is the veteran, Mr J. E. Harting, whose “ Hints on Shore -Shooting ” 
long ago inflamed many a youthful enthusiast. I remember therein a 
picture of grey plovers in their summer-plumage that aroused in me a 
sort of waking dream for years. Then there is Mr J. G. Millais, who not 
only combines to the full this dual character, but added thereto the in- 
spiration of the artist, and whose exquisite drawings depict wildfowl 
in their haunts with a graphic power that can come only from long 
practical experience of the subject, and from deep instinctive intuition. 
None can study the illustrations in “ The Fowler in Scotland ” without 
realizing the nature and haunts of wildfowl in far clearer perspective 
than I can hope to give in reams of written words. 
We have now penetrated (in imagination) afar into the desolation of 
tidal ooze and mudflat. The first point that strikes attention is the sheer 
immensity of these places — their dead-levels at first deceive eyesight. 
Objects that one had taken to be comparatively near, prove leagues away. 
I well remember (though it is over forty years ago), this feature being 
first impressed upon me by the following incident. Having noticed a moving 
object on a distant sandbank that, with naked eye, I took to be possibly a 
seal, on bringing the glass to bear, the object proved to be a man with a 
horse and cart collecting seaweed some four miles away ! Similarly groups 
of bait -gatherers in farthest distance may be mistaken for curlews probing 
at half a mile ; or vice versa should the condition be reversed — such are 
the phantasies of space, and the tricks that atmosphere, on these far- 
stretched flats, can play with eyesight. 
All this, however, is digression, and we must get back on our course. 
The gunboat is now navigating mid -channel, and, maybe, a flock of 
white sea-gulls, some half-mile away, catch the eye. Close by these sits 
a second group, also white; but if your eyesight be keen it will detect 
a different quality in their respective colours, albeit both white. That 
of the detached group displays quite a glossy sheen as compared with the 
dull white of the gulls. The glass shows the former to be sheld -ducks, and 
several of them actually mix with the gulls. The latter are all asleep, or 
quiescent; but many of the sheld -ducks are seen to be poking about in 
the slob, picking up a light lunch of shell -fish and small crustaceans, 
varied with an occasional bite of green sea-grass. Sheld-ducks feed as much 
by tide as by the clock. Not needing these (nor probably able to approach 
them if they did), the fowlers turn attention to what resembles a long dark 
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