Once again we are enjoying the pleasure of wild shooting in winter, but now in the open glades. Again there has been a slight fall of snow, and, sure, morning was never more beautiful. The feathered rain is crisp to the tread, and the warm sun converts the air to that of summer. The sea is blue, the hills rose-tinted, and the snow-crystals make the landscape gloriously, dazzlingly bright. A coating of snow will always arrest the eye of the observant sportsman, more especially if he have a _penchant_ for natural history. There are the tracks and trails of birds and animals, and what zest is added to the search in the possibility of finding a new one! Only those who follow the tracks of the snow-walkers know really how rich is the land in all animate nature. Be the stitching on the white coverlet never so faint or so delicate, it is always rendered faithfully. In the snow we read out the history of the wild creatures immediately about us, the existence of which we never even suspected. In our home fields there are two or three mice, as many shrews, and a couple of voles. These latter leave their tracks in the hedge-bottoms, or along the stream sides, and we see not only where they have burrowed, but what they have eaten. The shrews and mice are on dryer ground, and their delicate feet have pencilled the prettiest patterns upon the snow. The tracks of the partridge are pretty, too, and from them we read what ceaseless runners the birds are. A depression shows where they have roosted last night, and then their tracks may be followed through the stubble and seed fields. By the brook-side are the hair-like tracings of innumerable small birds; and the water margins here record the fullest registering. This may be owing to the soft brook banks and their aquatic life, when the rest of the fields are icebound. Then many of the spawning fish are still on the redds, and the prospect of these may be an additional inducement to some of the fish-feeding creatures. Here, clutching a tuft of couch-grass is a dead barn-owl, for which the intense cold has proved too much--one enemy less to the shrews and field mice, whose hasty tracks here and there show that more than once last night they have had to beat a hasty retreat. Once during the day, as the ferrets were turned into a burrow, some one pointed out a brace of ermines that had doubtless been looking after the rabbits on their own account. They were still in their brown summer fur, and made their way over the snow and out of harm's way at a remarkably rapid rate. This little incident reminds us of a brown owl which emerged from a rabbit-hole just as the ermines did, and curiously enough these birds had a couple of eggs and a young one even in December, with the ground snow-covered. The heavy blurred tracks of grouse were at first difficult to determine, and the key to them was only to be found in the birds themselves, as they rose with a startling whirr. They had been driven from the higher to the lower ground in search of food. One of the terriers disinterred a spiny hedgehog from its warm, leafy retreat, and "Prickles" probably felt much mystified to find himself in a world of dazzling whiteness.