XIII.]

A HUNTING POEM.

309

But I hold that out of all the hunting fields throughout the land

I could choose for active service a large-hearted, gallant band; I could choose six hundred red-coats, trained by riding in the van,

Fit to go to Balaclava under brave Lord Cardigan.

'Tis the finest school, the chase, to teach contempt of cannon balls,

If a man ride bravely onward, spite of endless rattling falls. And to be a first-rate sportsman, not a man who merely "rides,"

Is to be a perfect gentleman, and something more besides; Fearing neither man nor devil, kind, unselfish he must be, Born to lead when danger threatens-type of ancient chivalry. When you hear a “houndman" jeering at the "customers" in front,

Saying they come out to ride a steeplechase and not to hunt, You may bet the " grapes are sour," the fellow's smoked his

nerve away;

Once he went as well as they do: "every dog will have his day."

Though to ride about the roads in state may do your liver good, You see precious little "houndwork" either there or in the wood.

He who loves to mark the work of hounds must ride beside the pack,

Choosing his own line, or following others, if he's lost the knack. Lookers-on, I grant you, often see the best part of the game,Still, to ride the roads and live with hounds are things not quite the same.

Now a word to all those gallant chaps who love a hunting day:

In bad times you know that farming is a trade that doesn't pay; Barbed wire's the cheapest kind of fence; the farmer can't afford

Tempting post-and-rails and timber-for he's getting rather bored.

Therefore, if we want to ride with our old devilry and dash, We must put our hands in pockets deep and shovel out the

cash,

When you want to hire a shooting you will gladly pay a "pony,” Yet when asked to give it to the hounds you're apt to say you're "stony."

Pay the piper, and the sport you love so well will flourish yet, Flourish in the dim hereafter; and its sun will never set. Help the noble cause of freedom; rich and poor together blend Hands and hearts for ever working for a great and glorious end.

SPRING IN THE COTSWOLDS.

WHILST walking by the river one day in

May I noticed a brood of wild ducks about a week old. The old ones are wonderfully tame at this time of year. The mother evidently disliked my intrusion, for she started off up stream, followed by her offspring, making towards a withybed a hundred yards or so higher up, where a secluded spring gives capital shelter for duck and other shy birds. What was my surprise a couple of hours later to see the same lot emerge from some rushes threequarters of a mile up stream! They had circumvented a small waterfall, and the current is very strong in

places. Part of the journey must have been done on dry land.

At the same moment that I startled this brood out of the rushes a moorhen swam slowly out, accompanied by her mate. It was evident, from her cries and her anxious behaviour, that she too had some young ones in the rushes; and soon two tiny little black balls of fur crawled out from the bank and made for the opposite shore. Either from blindness or fright they did not join their parents in mid stream, but hurried across to the opposite bank and scrambled on to the mud, followed by the old couple remonstrating with them on their foolishness. The mother then succeeded in persuading one of them to follow her to a place of safety underneath some overhanging boughs, but the other was left clinging to the bank, crying piteously. I went round by a bridge in the hope of being able to place the helpless little thing on the water; but, alas! by the time I got to the spot it was dead. The exertion of crossing the stream had been too much for it, for it was probably not twelve hours old.

When there are young ones about, moorhens will not dive to get out of your sight unless their children dive too. It is pretty to see them swimming on the down-stream side of their progeny, buoying them up in case the current should prove too strong and carry them down. If there are eggs still unhatched, the father, when disturbed, takes the little ones away to a safer spot, whilst the mother sticks to the nest. But they are rather stupid, for even the day after the eggs are hatched, on being disturbed by a casual

XIV.]

MALLARD AND SWAN.

313

passer-by, the old cock swims out into mid stream. He then calls to his tiny progeny to follow him, though they are utterly incapable of doing so, and generally come to hopeless grief in the attempt. Then the old ones are not very clever at finding children that have been frightened away from the nest. I marked one down on the opposite bank, and could see it crawling beneath some sticks; but the old bird kept swimming past the spot, and appeared to neither hear nor see the little ball of fur. Perhaps he was playing cunning; he may have imagined that the bird was invisible to me, and was trying to divert my attention from the spot.

Moorhens are always interesting to watch. With a pair of field-glasses an amusing and instructive half hour may often be spent by the stream in the breeding

season.

I was much amused, while feeding some swans and a couple of wild ducks the other day, to notice that the mallard would attack the swans if they took any food that he fancied. One would have thought that such powerful birds as swans-one stroke of whose wings is supposed to be capable of breaking a man's leg-would not have stood any nonsense from an unusually diminutive mallard. But not a bit of it: the mallard ruled the roost; all the other birds, even the great swans, ran away from him when he attacked them from behind with his beak. This state of things continued for some days. But after a time the male swan got tired of the game; his patience was exhausted. Watching his opportunity he seized the pugnacious little mallard by the neck