that part of the district over which he may shoot; whether or no if there are plenty of birds in his part of the district in the morning, they will take themselves off to some other part of the district at half an hour's notice; whether, if they are found in abundance all day, they will lie well or whether they will prove so wild as to be scarcely approachable, if approachable at all; and whether, if they are abundant and lie well, the gunner will be able to hit them, or whether he will find himself quite off form.

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One goes off form more often and more thoroughly in snipe shooting than in any other kind of shooting whatsoever I am convinced that this is the experience of nineteen snipe shooters out of every twenty. A bad start almost inevitably means bad form throughout the day confidence lost after firing the first few shots cannot be picked up again till the following morning -if it can then. Colonel Hawker, that tough old sportsman of a past generation, tells us in his 'Diary' that on one occasion he killed thirteen snipe in succession, and then missed the following eleven. periences of the kind are far from rare; a man who can stop eight birds out of twelve when in his best form may at other times scarcely be able to touch a feather. Colonel Hawker also tells us that he killed the first thirteen jack at which he shot in the year

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1802, and then goes on to say :-' I have since fired eight shots at one jack, and missed them all.' An experience of this kind is also far from rare, and may be quite apart from the question of form; not only does the tiny bird often escape the charge, when the gun is held true, in a manner little short of miraculous, but it is very frequently missed through excess of allowance. If after killing a few full snipe in quick succession a jack rises, one is extremely apt to miscalculate the slower speed of the jack and to hold too far ahead.

On the subject of jack snipe, the following seems worth repetition. The story is told of a certain Quartermaster Molloy, of the 64th Regiment.

While he was quartered at Geneva Barracks, Ireland, he became passionately enamoured of snipe shooting. After his duty was over, or if he could obtain special leave for a day, he regularly equipped himself for sporting; and he had always the good luck to spring his jack snipe, at which he fired. He followed up immediately, and the bird dropped so close to him, often, that he was firmly persuaded he had killed it. He used to run, with breathless eagerness, to lay hold of his prize; when, lo! it would again rise and fly a little farther. One day, he fired eighteen times at it, and each time thought he had killed it. It served him for a whole season. At length he was one day crossing the bog in which it lay, when up it rose, and he exclaimed, 'There's my old friend!' threw a stick at it, and killed it on the spot. When

ever any of his brother officers found a jack snipe, they were always sure to say, 'There goes Quartermaster Molloy.' 1

Snipe shooting should be made illegal throughout the British Islands till October 1. The birds are seldom really fit to shoot before that time, besides lacking a great deal of the dash that distinguishes them afterwards. October 1 is now the opening day for snipe shooting in several Irish counties. Would that all our County Councils might follow suit—and, while they were about it, would that they might make September 15 the opening day for duck of all kinds, and March 15, or even March 21, the closing day for duck on the coast. Such a change in duck shooting dates would give the flappers a chance at the beginning of the season, and, at the close of the season, would give the wildfowler the opportunity for which he so often sighs in these days of topsy-turvey winters.

It has been said that, after India, the Outer Hebrides in a good season afford the finest snipe shooting in the world. In Ireland, the best snipe districts are Counties Galway, Mayo, Kerry, Cork, and Clare; in England, the best snipe counties are Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Lincolnshire, and CamBlakey's Shooting.

bridgeshire. There was a time when large English districts could show snipe shooting as good as any to be had in the sister Isle. Drainage and cultivation, however, have now forced England into a very inferior position in this respect. Yet, in a few favoured localities in our Eastern counties, some of the finest snipe shooting attainable is still to be had. when the season happens to be right. One such locality known to me, only a few hundred acres in extent, holds snipe by the thousand in a good year, and is but rarely shot over. I knew as an old man one who, in his young days, made his winter's living by shooting over the undrained marshes of a Norfolk river valley. On one occasion I received satisfactory corroboration of this from an independent source-he bagged a hundred couple of snipe in the day, shooting from dawn to dusk. At that time it was not such a very uncommon thing for a good shot to kill his fifty couple in the day on this particular tract of marsh.

I believe I am right in saying that the largest bag of snipe ever made in the British Islands—or ever recorded as having been made by one gun in a single season is the bag secured by Mr. P. Halloran in County Clare during the long winter of 1880-81. Mr. Halloran's total for the season amounted to no

less than 1,376 head. In County Sligo Mr. Edward Gethin killed 959 birds during the season of 1877-78 Mr. Lloyd, a well-known writer on sport and natural history in his own day, tells us that, also in Ireland, he killed in 1820 1,310 snipe. Mr. Mottram, shooting in 1884 in one of the islands of the Hebrides, killed 992 snipe by the end of October. Snipe have never been so abundant in the British Islands as they were in 1880-81, when many districts teemed with the birds. During this year one game dealer in Ireland purchased and despatched to the different markets nearly 17,000 snipe. Of this total-these figures are beyond all questioning—over 9,000 were brought in by the peasants in the neighbourhood of Tralee, County Kerry. In England we cannot now in any way approach such figures, though very large seasons' bags were made on undrained land years ago, when snipe literally swarmed in the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire fens. Still, of later years some noteworthy bags have been made. Not such a very great while ago, in a locality over which I have myself done a good deal of snipe shooting, Mr. R. Fellowes accounted for 158 birds in a day. In one day, in 1860, Lord Leicester, at Holkham, got 156 snipe to his own gun.

Probably the very hottest snipe corner in all