thirty in a flock, and, even in the most severe seasons, seldom or never are observed to intermix with the birds of a different character from themselves. Of this latter class of water-fowl may be enumerated the following: The sheldrake (A. vulpicephalus), black duck or scoter (4. ater), pochard (Fuscus ferus anas), pintail (A. caudacuta), golden eye (A. clangula), and a few others, which may be regarded as raræ aves on our coasts. I have observed that the above birds are exceedingly prone to the practice of diving, and that they devote the greater portion of their time during the day to this habit; it is at night they frequent the vast savannahs of mud, covered with wrackgrass, which in many instances abut on the estuaries of the British shores.

Hoopers (wild swans), cygnus ferus, with grey and brent geese, afford during this month occasional sport to the punt-gunners; but the former, with the exception of the down they furnish for muffs and tippets, are not worth the powder and shot wasted upon them. The ladies highly appreciate the flocculent produce of the hooper, and attach much importance to it when converted into an article of millinery; but in no other point of view is it worthy consideration. The writer upon a past occasion was invited to a "swan-feast." The bird had been shot during the hard winter of 1840 off the harbour of Poole, in Dorsetshire. There was a goodly company present upon the occasion of the fowl banquet. It had been committed to the spit as a roaster (or rooster), stuffed with sage, onions, and mashed potatoes, after the fashion of "goose in Galway." Gravy was made for it. It looked a delightful picture of culinary super-excellence; but it repelled the several assaults of the carver. Its savoury surface placed the knife hors de combat; it was a compound of horn and hide that would have vied with the pachydermatous armour of a vetust rhinoceros. I never afterwards tried my ability in an attempt to dismember the integumeuts of this famed bird of the fords of Meander.

There has been already an ample show of woodcocks, as well as snipes, exhibited throughout the markets this season; and, although the importations from the Continent have been upon a somewhat restricted scale for the time of year, nevertheless there has been no lack of this class of articles, either in a sporting or a consumptive point of view, but which proved ample according to the ordinary demands of experience. It is true that the birds above-named being of a migratory character, must prove at all seasons very uncertain as to their presence among us. A great deal must depend upon the more immediate tone and temper of the climate, and the season which regulates the same. In mild winters it for the most part happens that the gralla and other soft-billed birds linger late in high latitudes, so long as they are enabled to shift for themselves and procure a temporary subsistence without risk or peril, to which cold weather attended with rigorous frosts would on the contrary seasonably expose them.

A young friend of the writer, residing in the neighbourhood of Tramore, in Ireland, who at the early age of fifteen has donned the sportsman's garb, and with gun in hand has just commenced his initiatory snipe-shooting career amid the quaking bogs of the famed unty of Waterford, speaks well of the snipe-shooting prospects presented him in that locality. It would appear that his first essay under the

above head is of as much importance to him-togged out in toga virilis -as if he had entered upon some national project rife with the spirit of enterprise. His natural inclinations are prone to field sports, for he speaks as familiarly of the angle as he would treat of the trigger, and will, there can be little doubt, connect himself shortly with the racy exploits of the Curraghmore Kennel. At the early age of fifteen he is emulous to aspire to a sporting title, and thus relates his opening snipeshooting career:

"PALACE SQUARE, TRAMORE, Nov., 1866.-Snipe are about the most abundant species of feathered spoil to be met with in or around this neighbourhood. I have permission to exercise my sporting pursuits over an area of some extent, in which the above birds are during the season tolerably plentiful; and, should the weather prove somewhat harder than it is at present, the 'whisps' of snipe will, there can be no doubt, be found to arrive hereabout in prodigious assemblages. A day or two since I made my first attempt to initiate my hand in this order of sport, and (to a complete novice in the art of snipe-shooting) I was put to a positive non-plus. I had not advanced in the bog Í entered five paces before a bird rose nearly under my feet, and went off querking' (as if he was laughing at me) in a zig-zag direction. I had been apprised by old hands at this order of sport, that the snipe was one of the most difficult birds on the wing to be brought down by a young inexperienced hand. I was informed that some sportsmen prefer to fire on its first rising, before it has time to abandon its tortuous evolutions, and assume a rectilinear flight. This piece of advice was, however, lost upon me in this particular instance. I was too much startled to discharge my projectile at the object, and stood gaping at the bird, undecided as to whether I should fire at it or not, until it was entirely out of range, so I waited for a succeeding chance. Another snipe almost immediately afterwards took wing from a tuft of rushes near at hand, and upon this occasion I possessed presence of mind sufficient to let fly at him, although he was beyond the range of my fowling-piece. Reloading, I progressed onward in the morass, when a third bird rose about six yards before me. Hereupon I pulled the trigger of my gun as it were spasmodically, and to my great delight detected through the smoke a shower of feathers, upon which event I concluded that the snipe was down, which, upon a near survey, I discovered lying dead in a patch of rushes. My old companion (the gamekeeper of the estate) coming up at the time, paid me many compliments at my success, on the strength of which I from that hour abandoned my old accustomed practice of blackbird shooting, and assumed the title and pretensions of a legitimate sportsman."

Hares have been plentiful up to the end of last month, and the weather has proved from the mildness of its character highly favourable for the operations of the coursing fraternity, which have been conducted with unusual spirit. In the course of the present month, the battue performances will be carried on to a large extent, and many of the extravagantly-stocked preserves distributed throughout the kingdom will undergo a sensible diminution of the game, which is at present found to swarm throughout the manorial estates of the landed aristocracy.

The Christmas-tide we speak of, we were a large party of all ages at an old-fashioned mansion under the Rangemoor Hills, the house being sheltered by a belt of noble elm-trees which bade defiance to any attempts of the bleak and boisterous winds getting at it.

The reader may imagine us seated around the capacious hearth, a blazing yule-log lying athwart the brazen dogs, and sending its forked lightning up the chimney midst the showering sparks from the splitting fibres, a ruddy glare flaring upon the happy physiognomies of the fireworshippers. Anecdotes had led the way, or broken out into story-telling appropriately spiced for the season, and plaudits having been bestowed on the last teller, an elderly gentleman was appealed to, who protested according to custom, that he hadn't any story to tell.

Kindly in countenance, comely in appearance he was a general favourite, and hearty the welcome that ever greeted him on his annual visit. He was not without eccentricity (and how few of us are free from some peculiarity) an intense antipathy being fostered by him against railways; not that he had bought Great Dotherems at 250 and sold them at 5, but the mode of transit was obnoxious to him. He was impetuous in his language against the proposed abolition of turnpikes; dropped, it was said, "the silent tear" at the probable felo-de-ses of those poor fellows the coachmen and guards of Regents, Tallyho's, Emeralds, and Regulators; got wild at the mention of Mails; and sighed at the discontinuance of posting.

And yet, Mr. Fitzpenn was a Londoner-a Londoner bred and born, and, at the very time we speak of, the possessor of an appointment which, compelling him to live there, brought him six or seven hundred a-year as Registrar of Velums in the Waste Paper Office, the heaviest duty of which involved the necessity of his appending his signature to certain quarterly returns, including a receipt for his own salary.

"Come," said our host, "we're impatient; anything will do-reminiscences

"Travelling incidents," remarked somebody, looking archly at one or two of us.

66

'Capital suggestion!" we exclaimed; "give us coaching recollections."

"The youngsters will amazingly enjoy any of your experiences," added our host.

"Well, well," replied Mr. Fitzpenn, good humouredly; "if you really think that you would care to listen to the garrulous talk of a sexagenarian conjuring up matters of yore, I'm sure I have no objection to throw what I can into the pool.

"From whence it arose that I, who before I numbered twelve Christmasses never got inside or outside a coach--that I, who born within the distant sound of Bow Bells, and having no rural associations whatever with the mud-bespattered Mail rattling along the High-street of a town, or ordinary conveyance enveloped in dust wreathings that marked its way along the winding road-should have had so strong a predilection for such things, I am unable to discover, nor shall I puzzle yourselves. So it was, and the only solution that I care to hazard is, that the dwellers in cities have an innate mystical love for the country, and in my days the mode of getting there as then established.

"When a larger allowance of pocket money permitted the indulgence, flinging a wrapper over my arm I have strolled down to the nearest accessible starting place, clambered to the box-seat of a coach, were it fortunately vacant, and with the conviction that the assembled bystanders imagined me booked for Carlisle, Bristol, York, or Dover, (chuckling at my harmless imposture) have gone as far as the first stage, tipped the driver and guard, witnessed the change, beheld the second team make their plunge, and, turning my steps towards Babylon again, walked back every bit of the way, better for the whole treat, the perfume from green fields, the fresh air, and the exercise, which brought healthy slumbers, agreeably interspersed by dreams inducing an imaginary prolongation of my evening's trip.

Curious fancy wasn't it?" he said mildly after a pause, as though to disarm any disapproval or adverse criticism dormant in his hearers. "But I must think a few moments."

And fresh faggots were thrown across the back of the log, glasses of negus were refilled, and then a general settling down amongst the listeners, when he suddenly announced that his memory recalled the incidents of a journey of many years ago, while with a genial smile at the juveniles, he observed it might be the better worth having as it had a strong touch of the supernatural, for if it were not a regular ghost story, at any rate it was very like one; and the pretty little girls whispered together in pleasant murmurings of anticipation, and the chubby boys rubbed their hands as though hot marbles were in the palms.

"The winter to which I am referring was, I should conceive, the coldest any of the oldest amongst us may remember, or at the least would care to remember. It was the dullest too and the dreariest, for to cast one's eyes from the leaden sky adown on the snow-covered ground was even a relief, the heavy falls in the north being rivalled by those in the south, east, and west.

"Mind you, I'm speaking of mid-winter as I always call it, the main part of December and January I mean. In the streets of London there were walls of snow on either side from the accumulated gatherings thrown up by spade and broom, ill-luck to the shopkeepers, the suspension in part of our traffic in the Metropolis being equalled in its way by

.

the detentions to and from it, indescribable loss and confusion arising to the mercantile community. Fogs unparalleled for their density enveloped London and its suburbs, the darkness being appalling from many of the glimmering oil-lamps getting frozen. Footpads multiplied, and took advantage of the murkiness to rob and run, the Bow-street redbreasts no terror to them. Highwaymen plied their desperate avocation almost unmolested in the vicinity, harboured by the innkeepers of bad repute, the mounted patrols (in those times principally pensioned cavalry appointed to the dangerous duty), being set as it were at defiance through these coverts or lurking dens, their sabres undrawn and pistols unholstered. However, if I were to recount a twentieth part of the murders and misdoings, the casualties and mishaps of that winter, I should never get on with my story.

"Invited to pass ten days at a friend's house about a hundred and twenty miles from town, I had gladly accepted his asking, and having secured a place by the Wonder' a fortnight previously, we left the Golden Cross at six o'clock on the morning of New Year's Eve, full freighted in and out, and heavily loaded with luggage. Inside were a widow lady and child, a provincial banker, and a merchant. Outside a clergyman, whose scant and seedy apparel it pained me to see when light dawned; a half-pay military officer, who swore cannon balls and gunpowder at the weather and nearly all things else (to the clergyman's distress); an artist; an Oxonian; two pilots; and anybody else you please farmers, or what not; my informant of some of those I have named being Jehu, by whom I was seated.

"Everything was still, as dark, at the hour of starting. It snowed from the first stage onwards;

falling

'flakes

Descending, and with never-ceasing lapse,
Softly alighting on all below;'

'broad and wide and fast, dimming

The day with a continual flow.'

"Every mile of the way nearly it was collar work, and the rattertap, tap-a-tat of the horses' hoofs, which sounds so cheerily on a good metalled road or frosted surface, came down dull and muffled on even the hardest parts of the woolly road.

"We had admirable cattle, excellently handled, and kindly encouragement under their laborious difficulties was resorted to far more frequently than whipcord for the persuasive, as they struggled on through the accumulated snow, often above their fetlocks, and occasionally above their knees.

"The choleric captain and the rest of my fellow-passengers may have found the journey wearisome, but for my own part the diversity of landscape, enveloped though it was in a silvered instead of verdant covering, the variety of objects following each other in succession, and occurrences of one sort or another, rendered it the reverse of tedious to myself.

"As we neared the little hamlet of Nestlecombe its church clock chimed forth the hour of nine, only eighty-seven miles of our journey having been accomplished.