sold between October and March. "I find the figures alarming," he writes, “25,000 brace, as shown "by the dealers' books. 18,000 brace were exported to Japan and the southern ports, Hongkong "being the greatest market; and I am safe in saying that some mail boats take away as many as 1,000 "brace at a time." Now this quantity is seasonable game; add to it the tons of spoilt birds which arrive here in July, August and September, and some faint idea may be formed of the vastness of the game supply, which is ever on the increase. The 2,500 brace of birds, then, which fall in a lucky year to the foreigner's gun are but a drop in the bucket compared with the enormous quantity shot by natives for market purposes, which is now estimated as approaching 40,000 brace in the year.

Just as it was years before the once great shooting country between Nadoo and the Barrier was discovered, few sportsmen caring to risk the exploration west of Leyang, so it may still be some time before the resources of the country bordering the Great South Lake are properly ascertained. At present the only known access to the lake is by the three or four small creeks which break off to the eastward from the main or Ningkwofu Creek, south of Hsinghochwang, while the getting to that district from Shanghai entails the long, wearisome and expensive journey to Wuhu. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that entrances to the lake might be discovered by some waterway from Leyang on the north or by some of the creeks trending south-south-west from Eshing. Reference to the chart facing page 110 indicates water communication with Tongchia, a large town on the west side of the lake. He, then, will deserve well of his fellow-sportsmen who sacrifices a portion of his holiday to the solution of this query. Imagine what such a discovery would mean! the shooting over the practically virgin country which borders a lake nearly 11 miles in length from north to south and 29 miles from east to west; and the economy of much valuable shooting time.

A word may here be put in on behalf of an institution whose prospects would be brighter if assisted by the up-country goer. The Hon. Curator of the Shanghai Museum, after deploring its present condition, brought about as much by public indifference as by want of means, says that sportsmen can do much towards renovating the old collection. He wants specimens of as many birds as he can get, especially the small birds, which, unless carefully looked for, easily escape observation; and says that "all other specimens of any kind" will be gratefully received. "We are so poor that everything is good for us," he pitifully adds. Could appeal be stronger than this?

In conclusion, I beg to offer my sympathy to the bereaved husband of the graceful scholar who compiled the Vocabulary, and to express my warmest thanks to my many contributors for the readiness with which they came forward with their support: to Mr. and Mrs. DEIGHTON-BRAYSHER for their bright "Trip to the Hills;" to Mrs. F. J. MAITLAND for her useful Cookery Notes; to the Right Rev. Bishop MoULE and the Rev. Dr. Du BOSE for their articles on the "Cities under Heaven;" to Mr. GEO. JAMIESON, H.B.M.'s Vice-Consul General, for his authoritative article as to "What to do in case of Trouble with the Natives," as well as for many valuable suggestions; to Dr. HENDERSON for his Medical contribution; to Mr. A. E. JONES for his Yachting and Mr. DUNCAN GLASS for his Wild-fowl Notes; to Messrs. CROAL, ROBERTS and ASHLEY for their expert papers on "The House-Boat;" to Mr. CARLES, H.B.M.'s Consul at Chinkiang, and Messrs. H. P. WADMAN, E. A. ALDRIDGE, A. L, ROBERTSON, A. R. GREAVES,

H. R. HEARSON and O. G. READY for their respective Notes; to Mr. KUM AYEN, who enjoys the unique position of being the first native of the Celestial Empire who has ever written in English an article on sport; to Mr. GEO. BURGOYNE for his artistic Frontispiece; and to many other friends for welcome advice. I am under a great obligation to Mr. STYAN for his valuable scientific papers; and to my friend, Mr. J. L. BROWN, who cheerfully undertook the thankless task of reading the proofs and seeing these pages through the press.

The introduction of the articles on the Flora of the neighbourhood, on the Preservation of Specimens, and the Topographical Notes on the great cities of Hangchow and Soochow, though not quite connected with Sport, will, it is trusted, kindle a fresh interest in the incidents of an up-country trip.

Finally, may expression to the hope be permitted that for all the readers of this book there may yet be much sport and many happy days "With Boat and Gun in the Yangtze Valley"!

SHANGHAI, 30th November 1895.

H. T. WADE.

With Boat and Gun in the Yangtze Valley.

CHAPTER I.

OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE SHOOTING IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY.
BY THE EDITOR.

F all the departments in the great domain of sport none has ever been more keenly or consistently supported in North China than the first and oldest of them all. Even before Shanghai was opened by treaty, officers from the well-manned opium schooners lying at Woosung used to organise shooting parties to work the Paoshan neighbourhood, and from that time to the present day the votaries of shooting have never been found to be lacking either in energy or in numbers. Nor is the reason far to seek, for, apart from the all-absorbing interest which game shooting both demands and commands from the sportsman, its pleasures are of longer duration than those attaching to the pursuit of any other sport; while it is a pastime that may be indulged in on almost equal terms by the owner of the slender as of the well-filled purse. Again, so many natural conditions combine to foster and maintain in Shanghai a love for shooting. There are bountiful supplies of game always more or less close to hand; there are the wonderful spring and autumn migrations of the snipes and plovers and other birds of passage, and then, again, the winter arrival of the wild fowl in numbers-all affording in their season opportunity for the satiation of the keenest shooter.

Few large places can boast of better snipe shooting than Shanghai, situate as it is at the eastern limit of the great migratory spring and autumn band, which itself is known to be at least 500 miles in width. One gets quite lost in wonderment at the millions of birds such a broad flight line signifies, for be it remembered that sportsmen are busy at work here, at Chinkiang, at Kiukiang and at Hankow every day during the passage of the long-bills, which generally exceeds three weeks, twice a year. A short time ago the plains of Kashing and Haiee were great places for the snipe shooter, but trenching and reclamation of the fallow grounds appear to be driving the birds to more congenial pastures further westward. One of the best individual bags with which we are acquainted was made by the late Mr. Montague Hawtrey, who, at the end of April 1872, near Lokopan on the Soochow Creek, got to his own gun, a muzzle-loading Joe Manton, fifty-one couples of spring snipes. The pertinacity of snipes is remarkable. They will not be denied a favourite feeding ground. Ample proof of this may be witnessed any spring or autumn evening when the birds are down. In a small segment of the circle bounded by the Shanghai Race Course, which is almost surrounded by houses, the birds loved to settle down for the night, despite the proximity

of two cricket grounds actively occupied, and the presence of a couple of hundred ponies out grazing. And with this knowledge a dozen or more gunners were for years wont to surround the charmed spot and keep up a merry fusillade, more to their own enjoyment possibly than to the pleasure of those taking an evening walk round the Course, or of the cricketers or of the ponies. But this rendezvous will doubtless have been "improved" out of all recognition before the close of 1895.

Who will ever forget the thrill born of a first shooting trip? Where is the man who once having made an up-country excursion does not desire several repetitions of the outing? Shooting will always be popular in North China, not only because it is a magnificent tonic to a jaded system, but rather on account of its indescribable and indestructible pleasures-the pleasure of anticipation, which brooks no interference, the pleasure of realisation, which those only know who have experienced it, and the sweet pleasure of memory always to fall back upon, which nothing can obliterate.

"When Time, who steals our hours away,

Shall steal our pleasures too,

The memory of the past will stay,

And half our joys renew."

It is not to be supposed that any but the crudest review of shooting in this and the adjoining provinces can be given in the limits of a short article like the present; still it is hoped that some slight general impression may be offered. For convenience sake, then, three distinct periods may be said to mark the course and progress of the sport of shooting in North China. There are the seventeen years which elapsed from the date of the opening of the port in 1843 to the commencement of the Taiping Rebellion in 1860; there is the period of the Rebellion itself and its immediately succeeding years; and there is that better known time dating from 1866 onwards.

As regards the early days of Shanghai shooting there are very few actual records, but there are happily still amongst us to-day those who were keen sports nearly fifty years ago. The shooting then lay chiefly round the walls of the city, and in the fields lying between the present Ningpo Joss House and the Louza Police Station. Occasionally the Whangpoo was crossed, sometimes a run up to the Loongwha Pagoda was made, and, when time afforded, a trip to the Hills was enjoyed, where capital shooting was to be had all round Fengwanshan. Generally, however, shooting was quite local, for an afternoon's walk from the Settlement invariably rewarded the enthusiast. More rarely, venturesome sportsmen would make up a small party, take a native boat to Chapoo, cross the Hangchow Bay to Ningpo, which they made use of as a sort of head-quarters. But at that time big bags were not the order of the day, and the shooter was quite content with a daily total of three brace of pheasants, a hare or two, and a few extras. Natives then snared for the small foreign market, and bumboats, even in 1845, supplied sailing vessels with pheasants at the rate of six birds for a dollar. Foreign sporting dogs were occasionally imported, but few dogs of quality were seen before the "sixties."

During the Rebellion itself sportsmen's movements were naturally restricted, but at its conclusion Woosung and local native house-boats came into requisition-the Soochow Creek, then much wider than now, being the favourite waterway. Yakitan, Naziang and Kading, in one direction, Wongdoo and Powwokong, further west, were the points usually made for; but the biggest bags were generally notched at Lokopan, 40 miles from Shanghai, until the ruined city of Taitsan became for the time the sportsman's paradise. From 1866 to 1870 Kazay and Kashing maintained unrivalled their fame as sporting centres; for though sportsmen visited Hangchow and Hoochow in those days, nothing appears to have been known of the interlying country; and it was not before 1870 that what were until quite recently known as the