As soon as the light began to fail I ceased firing and retrieved my birds, which numbered twenty-seven, including several varieties of fish ducks with serrated bills and, as I have subsequently learnt although then mistaking them for large divers, three goosanders. On my way back to the house-boat I surprised and shot a goose which was feeding close under the river bank, so that my total bag consisted of fifty-one head, and I always look back on that day as one of the most enjoyable I have ever spent. The snipe-shooting cannot be surpassed anywhere in the world. In spring, after spending the winter in rich southern climes, these birds, following the returning warmth, slowly migrate to Siberia for nesting. They pass through Central China during May, arriving almost simultaneously, when for about three weeks one can have superb sport, and then they depart as suddenly as they came. One day they will swarm, and the next hardly a bird is to be seen. Snipe-shooting at home one always associates with long boots, cold water, mud and marshes. Spring snipe-shooting in China is of a totally different kind. Imagine a bright, warm day, with the sun almost too powerful, dry meadows with fresh, green grass, and clover about six inches high, fields of wheat and barley in ear and beans in flower, all Nature at her best. You take your gun with a plentiful supply of cartridges, a coolie to carry bottled beer and sandwiches and to pick up the birds, and sally forth into the meadows and fields, dressed in an ordinary light summer suit or flannels, terai hat and low shoes, with the bottoms of your trousers tucked into your socks to keep out the insects. You have not gone far before one, two--half a dozen birds rise within easy range, and perhaps you make a right and left. What birds they are, too, fat as butter!--in fact, so fat and heavy that they often rip quite open merely from the force of falling to the ground. In this way you go on, firing until the gun becomes so hot that every now and then you must wait to let the barrels cool. My best bag for one day was forty-one and a half couples, but this has been doubled by sports who have shot to make a record. Autumn snipe, or spring snipe returned, on passing from Siberia to winter in the south, are not usually in very good condition, owing probably to the nature of the country from which they come, and strangely enough they appear to be less numerous and do not arrive so simultaneously as the spring birds, though remaining longer, many staying on through the winter. These do not frequent the dry meadows and fields, but belong to the long boots, mud and marsh category. I have never seen but one jack snipe, though the painted variety is fairly common.