having charged our armoury with two rounds of "Bristol bead shot," a size of metal which would succeed in breaking bones at one hundred yards distance off, and even at a longer range.

We had so disposed our guns that we had a full and uninterrupted view of the birds, both when they alighted in the water and when they were settled on it; and we had so planned our manoeuvres that one should not discharge his gun before the other, so that both might share an equal chance with the birds.

Half-an-hour elapsed, when the flights began to drop in. Some of the companies proved unusually strong, consisting of twelve and twenty in each company. The whole of the flocks were composed of duck and mallard; there were no widgeon or teal among them. In less than an hour the ditches were quite alive with their numbers, and we considered it now time to commence our assault upon the feathered assemblages. Understanding each other's signs, we opened our killing batteries, and with a double salute managed to possess no less than twenty-three duck and mallard, killed and wounded. We now repelled our punts back into the stream, and paddled towards Ditton, well pleased with the extent of our sport for that night, and dividing our spoil, regaled ourselves gladly with a glass of brandy-and-water, and such other fare as the fens could furnish us with.

For several nights successively we took advantage of the above style of sport; but the fowl from repeated instances of alarm, which they experienced from our detonating course of practice, abandoned their respective feeding haunts, and betook their presence to other quarters, wherein they could enjoy the privilege of collecting their food without the chance of meeting with harm or interruption.

These

During the days we encompassed our legs in fen-boots, and traversing over the moors, gun in hand, picked up all that perchance came in our way. We met with prodigious good success on the teal grounds. birds love to lie undisturbed in the dykes that intersect the reeds and sedge hillocks, in which retreats they conceal themselves during the day. It is at night they steal forth from their latebræ, and taking wing, seek the moist morasses and the quaking mires, in which worms and insects of the phryganea order are to be met with in vast abundTeal will often frequent wide expansive meres, and keep out of gun shot with much wariness.

ance.

Some forty-five years ago there was some excellent sport attached to "duck shooting" in the fens of Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Lincolnshires. As cultivation has increased and the waste lands have been cared for, the birds that were at one time accustomed to have recourse to such countries have entirely abandoned their wonted localities, and on spots where they once abounded they at present are seldom or never witnessed. There is the bittern, or mire-drum, the booming accent of which bird has not been overlooked by our best poets; this creature was aforetime by no means uncommon amid the fens and washes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire; whereas at the present time a bird. of the kind is not to be seen alive in the country, and such a specimen would not now be recognized were it not consulted for its presence in the establishments of the naturalist, or in some of the ornithological It is a rara avis in the British Fauna. cabinets of our public museums. Again, the heron (Ardea major) is by no meaus a bird so common as

it was wont to be some thirty years ago. It was a goodly interesting spectacle, some fifty years since, to behold a herony on some old baronial hall; the nests all packed together upon the apex of some lefty tree, where the old male birds were to be observed watching the females, whilst they were absorbed in carrying out the domestic duties of incubaton.

At Cressy Hall, near Spalding, Lincolnshire, the superb mansion of the late Sir Assheton Lever, Bart., was, about one hundred years ago, a very extensive herony, which possessed much interest. A large falconry was upheld on the premises, and was attended with a vast fund of sport. The establishment has long since fallen into decay, and the herony has ceased to exist.

The "red shank" and the "avocet" are now very rarely to be met with in any part of the fens of England, yet were they within thirtyfive years since often captured in the low lands of Lincolnshire: what birds of the kind find their way into this country now-a-days proceed hither from Holland and Flanders.

Again, there is one link in the ornithological chain of British birds, once common in the fens, which is thoroughly lost. I would, in this place, advert to the ruff and its female the reeve.

The above creatures were at one period plentiful in our climate ; but at present there is not one to be met with; they used to fetch seven shillings each bird, in the English market; these luxuries also come to us from Holland. They fetch high prices, varying from seven to fourteen shillings a couple.

The fens are now not worthy a sportsman's attention in relation to wild-fowl shooting, with the exception of a few meres; the marsh lands are changed, and form rich agrarian tellurian earth.

A RUSH THROUGH THE RUSHES.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKer, from a PAINTING BY H. L. ROlfe.

BY GREVILLE F. (BARNES).

The phase here so admirably depicted by the angler-artist Mr. H. L. Rolfe, of a jack on the feed, will be recognised and appreciated by every one who has looked over stream or lake when the tyrant of the fresh waters is ready for a snack. See, he makes a sudden foray amongst a shoal, and out of their native element go the whole finny tribe to avoid the rapacious jaws of their ruthless destroyer. But mark the instinct of the smaller fish: they throw themselves with a summersault-like spring, and in an acrobatish fashion, which tends to bring their bodies behind their pursuer, and thus he will have to curb the velocity of his progress through the water before he can turn, and again repursue his prey. By this exercise of tact most of the shoal will escape; but that aldermanic gentleman, who has doubtless been stuffing to repletion upon a mixture of greaves and carrion gentles from the hands of some patient bottom fisher, has but a small chance in his plethoric unwieldiness to get away from that fine set of inward-directed teeth. Indeed, the look of the pike in the engraving, from the tip of his under-jaw to the end of

his tail, is all certainty, and the eye has already anticipated the treat in store for the stomach. If ever the fate of fish was decided, it is that of the helpless wretch, but now over the expectant mouth of the hungry villain beneath it. Can you not hear the snap of his formidable mandibles?-see the half-pounder crosswise, secured as between a couple of devilish calipers, and before the monster has scarcely disappeared in the deeps, perceive the head of the victim cunningly turned belly-ward, and rapidly on its road to its living tomb?

The incident thus pictorially rendered is, however, in the matter of the flying fish, as but an episode to that which occurs when a pike is first struck by the angler, and makes a dash across river or mere, more particularly if the water be shallow. Then, what a host of small fry dash upwards for dear life! and the track of the brute can be only known in its swiftness by this silver shower, which indicates the exact course he has taken. Many a large pike owes his death to this infallible hint alone; for it is sometimes half the battle to know where a desperate fish has gone to, especially where weeds and snags are dominant.

This nicely-composed picture is, moreover, suggestive of a fact that I believe has not been treated upon even by naturalists as it deserves, but which there is little doubt is a large consideration in the economy of nature, more particularly in its application to fish that feed upon their own species. The young, the healthy, and the active have the largest chance awarded to them of an escape from destruction; while the sickly and the old are more likely, if actual size does not protect them, to fall to the sacrifice. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that a fish in perfect fettle is not altogether so acceptable to the pike tribe as one slightly indisposedthat an invalid roach or a convalescent gudgeon has more charms for master Jack than the hale and robust. That there is a wise order in this arrangement will be at once recognised. Fish, if allowed to die and decay, would add to the impurities of the very element from which the scavenger derives both his existence and his comfort; and then, it may be, the cowardly tyrant experiences a greater goût in the destruction of those who cannot help themselves, like many another bully in a different element, I could name.

I recollect once standing upon the stone bridge over the lake at Littleton, in conversation with a party stopping with the late Colonel Wood, M.P. for Middlesex, when a jack of some five or six pounds was pointed out to us by the keeper as being just beneath our eye. Under and over, around and about this fish, the roach, small and large, were disporting, while he remained entirely motionless. Sometimes most tempting-looking baits would swim close, and apparently without the slightest fear, within an inch of his head; yet not a symptom of taking advantage of this "continuity of grub" exhibited itself. "Strange,"

observed a lady present," and yet you have given that poor creature the worst of characters; and sec! he poises himself there amidst some fifty or sixty little fish, who seem rather to prefer to be close about him than otherwise!" I remarked, that if our friend were to show the most remote sign of returning hunger, not a fish would stay near him, or that indeed if one of them were to begin to "wabble," or exhibit the least appearance of departure from the strictest line of a healthful condition, its death-warrant and execution would follow on the instant, To prove this, I took a perfectly lively roach from the fish-kettle, and