Shooting with a neighbour on some land adjoining Nuneham, my attention was
drawn to the very elegant appearance of all the gates and rails adjacent
to the road. As the ground was always beautifully farmed and in good
order, the condition of the gates did not surprise me. There was, however,
a story attached to their smartness. A seller of quack medicines had sent
out advertisers with most objectionable little bills, which he had posted
on every gate adjoining the roads. My entertainer, who was the occupier of
the land, had brought an action against the medicine man for defacing his
gates, which was only compromised by the delinquent undertaking to paint
every gate. He demurred at first to painting the railings too, but in the
end had to do this also.

The stalking-horse is still part of the sporting equipment of some old
Thames-valley farmhouses, but not in this neighbourhood. Only one wet
season fell to my lot, and then, though I often saw bodies of duck, I had
no opportunity of getting near them. A neighbour anchored a punt under a
hedge on the line which he believed the duck would take at dusk, and
killed several. Hard frosts send large bodies of duck to the river; they
come as soon as ever the large private lakes, like those at Blenheim,
Wootton, and Eynsham are frozen, and lie in small flocks all along the
river. Water-hens are so numerous on the river now, owing to their
preservation by the Conservancy, that any small covers of osier near are
full of them. They make extremely pretty old-fashioned shooting when
beaten up by a spaniel from the sedge and osier cover. I once turned out a
dozen water-hens, a brown owl, a woodcock, and a water-rail from one
little withe patch. When shooting the wood we always had one or two
water-hens in the bag, and sometimes a chance at a duck flying overhead
from the river. Only once were there many woodcocks in the cover. There
must have been at least five, and all were missed. At last, as we were
finishing the beat, one of the guns, who was young and keen, went off