inside the show; the picturs 'ud be thear when they cum out agin."

It would be impossible to describe the boy's delight when they were actually face to face with the wild animals they had only read about before. Den was in a state not easy to describe, and difficult for any who are not born naturalists to form any idea of. It was the happiest day he had ever spent ; the way home seemed short as they discussed all the wonders they had seen.

The next morning, before he turned out to play, Denzil tore up some more of his scraps.

CHAPTER VIII.

WITH THE SHORE-SHOOTERS.

"That old voice of waters, of birds, and of breeze,
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees."

IT was due to the influence of his mother's relatives that Den was allowed to roam so freely over the wild marshes, in the company of Scoot and Winder. He had also family connections who were shore-shooters, besides others on his father's side who farmed their own land as graziers; so that he learned the ways and habits of the wildfowl, whilst becoming familiar with their outward appearance, and the changes in their plumage in the different seasons.

To most, the marshes round about his home would have seemed a dreary wilderness; but the birds were there, and that was enough for him. In the spring there were the plovers to look at as they ran over the flats, the snipe to watch in their hum

ming upward flight, and what interested him still more, the redshanks playing their curious antics.

As summer drew near, the butterflies flitted about in the long marsh herbage; some of them were very beautiful, and a few now considered rare were then common enough on the flats.

But the early autumn was his chief time for observation. Then the waders came in flocks from their Northern homes where they had reared their young, to feed on the foreshore again. Comparatively few waders and swimming-birds breed in England. Those species that breed here migrate in their season to other countries, and others that breed beyond our seas come over to us again; so that there is a constant stream, so to speak, of countless hosts on the wing, either coming or going.

The plovers kept to the upland pastures, the redshanks and the snipes to the tussocky parts of the swamps, with little runs of water here and there; the ring-dotterels, in pairs, to any bit of shingle on the foreshore. Herons, moor-hens, and rails frequented the swamps, and a few terns dipped over the lagoons. The latter were not numerous here, for their proper breeding-place was miles away down the coast.

These were the birds Denzil watched in the spring and summer; a limited number, for such as finches and others did not live in the marshes.

In the autumn there was a change; then the dunlins came in thousands on the ooze, many of them with a great part of their beautiful summer plumage still on them. Sanderlings, stints, and knots, too, were there-not many of these latter in comparison with the others; but there were mobs of curlews, and they made enough noise too. A few grey plovers and the herons made up the show at this season.

When winter had fairly set in, the boy revelled in and about the bare district; for independently of the wild ducks and the springs of teal, the divingducks proper drifted alongshore with the black ducks the scoters-from the open sea in rough weather, to feed on the mussels, cockles, and small crabs that were to be found in profusion in the creek. They dived for these; shell-fish in all stages of growth were found there. It was the young tender shell-fish they fed on. ducks, we mean pochards, the red-headed pochards or dun bird, and the scaup or frosty-backed pochard, with the golden eyes or mottled wings. These. with the common scoter or black duck, comprised the diving-ducks known in the marshlands. The real divers, such as the red-throated and others -not the great Northern, for that was never seen in the creek at any time, let the weather be what it might with the grebes in winter plumage, from

By the term diving

the great to the little grebe, these, with the mergansers, went under the one comprehensive title of sprat-divers.

The gulls were there in full force; the great black-backed gulls called cobs, and the lesser black-backed, the herring or grey gull, with the black-headed gull in winter plumage, and the common gull. At rare intervals, if the weather was very severe, the great burgomaster gull in immature plumage might be seen, grandly flapping up the creek, but not far up, only about a mile from open water. It was very rarely that one of these was shot; as the fishermen and the shore-shooters observed, they had got eyes behind them. They called these Hollanders, North Sea fowl. That pied wader and swimmer the oyster-catcher, or musselpicker, was a rare bird round about the creek.

As to the black or brent geese, they fed on the long sea-grass, the Zostera marina of the botanist, which covers the slub ooze in places, but is not to be found in the sands. The geese are, as a rule, day feeders; but at times, if the weather was too rough for them to feed on the main shore, they would feed in the creek, evening, night, or morning,. according as the tide served.

When this was the case, the shore - shooters would lay their heads together, to get on the blind side, as they termed it, of those wary birds.