How many times I have endeavoured to trace the V said to be formed by duck while flying, and failed to detect it! They fly, it is true, in some sort of order, but those that come to the mere here travel rather in a row, or line, slanting forwards, something like what military men call in echelon. The teal seem much bolder than the wild duck: they are often shot as they rise out of the brooks; but the ducks very rarely go to the brooks at all, and can still more rarely be approached when they do. They swim in the water-carriers in the great irrigated meadows, but are careful to remain far out of range; so that the only way to shoot them by day is for two or more sportsmen to post themselves behind the hedges in different places while a third drives them up. The first snipes are seen generally in the arable lands, afterwards round the lake--the muddy shores by choice--and finally in the brooks. As the winter advances they seem to quit the lake in great part and go down to the brooks. A streamlet that runs through a peaty field is a favourite spot. The little jack-snipe frequent the water-carriers in the irrigated meadows and the wet furrows. When the lake is frozen over the wild duck stand on the ice in the daytime for hours together, leaving the marks of their feet on it. In walking along the shore lines of drift may be noticed, marking the height to which the waves driven by the wind have carried the floating twigs, weeds, and leaves: just as along the sea the beach is formed into terraces by the changing height of the tides. The shallower parts of the lake are so thickly grown in summer with aquatic weeds that a boat can only be forced through them with the utmost difficulty. Some of these grow in as much as eight or even ten feet of water. On the shore, where it is marshy, the mare's-tail flourishes over some acres: there is often a slight marshy odour here, which increases as the foot presses the yielding mud. When the water is low in autumn these are mown, and, with the aquatic grasses at the edge and the rushes, made into the roughest kind of hay imaginable. The coarser parts are used as litter; the best is mixed with fodder and eaten by cattle. Many waggon-loads are thus taken away, but as many more remain; and in walking over the spongy ground a smart `pop' is continually heard: it is caused by the sudden compression of air under the foot in the mare's-tails lying about; for their stems are hollow, and have knots at regular intervals.