Related article: bit of Valsartan Hctz country where, in the year before my visit and the year after, iadividual sportsmen bagged from ten to fifteen tigers. Then I I have, as a great privilege twice been allowed a week on one of the best rivers in the north. The first time, there was such a roar- ing spate that all fishing was out of the question ; the second the river was so low that, though the salmon could be seen frolicking ! io the water, they could not be tempted to leave it and after much labour I only succeeded in landing one decent fish. Well, my season's woodcock- shooting in the Hebrides, from which I had expected to draw so much delight, Valsartan Generic Name turned out a com- plete failure, not certainly as regards the delight, but the num- bers seen. Various reasons were given for Valsartan Mg this but the most I popular one was that there had I been a very hard winter in the previous year and that woodcock had starved and died from not being able to procure their natural food. I never quite believed in this, however, for independently of the fact that however hard the weather, there must always be many soft places left where a long bill can be inserted, a very acute Highland naturalist has noted that, even when all other birds and living things are dying from starvation in the frost-bound land, the woodcock generally remains fat and well-to-do, and he accounts for it thus : ** The intense firost drives the worms and minute animals which constitute their food into the open * eyes ' and rivulets, which never freeze, like sheep in a fank ; and thus the woodcock and snipe have their food with rather less trouble in frost than in more open weather." An old friend who has made fur and feather fly in all parts of the world and to whom I have sub- mitted these arguments, says from the fulness of his experience that he agrees with them up to a certain point. He thinks that woodcock retain their plumpness when many other birds are starv- ing, but he thinks that a frost lasting longer than a fortnight or three weeks affects them seriously and that they then fall away in flesh rapidly. Well, as I said, my season was Valsartan Diovan a bad one, but as I had many thousand acres over which I could wander and as there was no telling when a small flight of cock might choose to Losartan Valsartan pay a visit to some corner of my chasse^ I weekly walked many miles beating up likely spots here and there, buoyed up with the constant hope that a " flick" from a patch of Buy Valsartan bracken or tuft of heather would catch my ear, and that I should see a woodcock darting away, giving a chance suited to Diovan Valsartan my capacity. My labours were lightened in a measure by the friendly in forma- 8 BAILY S MAGAZINE. [January tion which the shepherds wlio tended t];ie black-faced flocks on the hills, always brought to me about any birds or beasts that they had seen in their professional rambles ; and let me here say what an invaluable friend is a shepherd on a wild shooting where game must be worked for before it can be handled. He knows and can tell where every brood of grouse is hatched, when any rare duck Valsartan 160mg visits the distant loch, when a flock of golden plover are feed- ing on the hill, or when a new- come woodcock has settled in some bosky glen. Let me recall a typical day. When Donald the keeper comes Purchase Valsartan to make his morning report, he says that ** Rob " (the shepherd) ** told me that he saw a wood- cock settle in the March Burn yesterday evening and there's likely to be more about the same place." The March Burn be it then, and we step off a couple of miles to the deep ravine, on the edge of my ground, down which rattles a mountain stream and whose Amlodipine And Valsartan sides are clothed with birches, stunted oaks, hazel bushes and thick bracken, now sered and brown with winter's icy touch. We are accompanied by the two most confidential dogs that I have ever owned. They are two veteran setters which were left at Generic Valsartan the lodge by the last ten- ant. Their age is great and they have left the springiness and viva- city of youth far behind in the vanished years. But though slow, they are steady and Valsartan 320 Mg never make a mistake. They have arrived at that time of life when liberties may be taken with them without fear of spoiling them in any way. They will scuttle through thick Valsartan Cost undergrowth to rouse any game that is lying hid as sagaciously as they will find and point at a grouse, and they may Valsartan Price withal be trusted to retrieve with certainty a fallen bird, carrying it with as careful and soft a mouth as the best of retrievers. We have had a sharp frost and there is a Valsartan Hct sprinkling of snow on the moorland. As we walk along the shore of the sea loch, we can mark an old seal raising his head close to the coating of ice and looking around with interest upon the world in general. A heron flaps away in front of us, but is too wary Valsartan Amlodipine to expose himself to danger. Here we are at last on our ground. The March Burn spreads out over a wide delta where it discharges itself into the loch and we begin by searching all the tussocky little islands through which it Valsartan Tablets flows. Carlo and Bess rush hither and thither intent on business but nothing is seen except a grey hen that rises out of shot. We work up the ravine which closes in till I, walk- ing by the burnside, can easily command both banks. For a quarter of Amlodipine Valsartan a mile nothing is roused and Valsartan 80mg we are entering upon a nar- row gorge, walled in by perpen- dicular cliffs forty or fifty feet high. We are not going to wade through the icy cold water and are just thinking of climbing up the sides of the ravine, to descend again beyond the rocks. Sud- denly from the foot of the cliff rises a brown bird. Mark! and I take a shot just as he is disap- pearing through the gorge. I can't say whether I have hit hi in or not and, if he is dead, he is on the other side of the cliffs. We climb up to their top and down again to the open burn bank be- Valsartan Generic yond. **Seek dead, Carlo,'" *' Seek dead, Bess," and the two veterans plunge into the thick ling and fern. Carlo has the wind of something, and with no inde- cent haste, works his way along^ the line of scent. By Jove ! He i9oa] WOODCOCK.