Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it himself without assistance from any one, and getting out a big duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and went down to the reed bed and concealed himself among the bushes at a suitable distance.

The birds were pouring in, and when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or two settled down again in the same place he fired again.

Then he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings.

But the birds returned in their thousands that evening, and his heart being still hot against them he went out a second time to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun.
Then when he had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and wounded fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his return to the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to "let the starlings alone" for the future--never to molest them again! I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity and repented.
Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the seven wonders of Britain.

And thanks to this great bank, a screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday resorts or towns of lodging-houses.
Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land.