332 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



possible, the next season. Many woodcooks breed in 

 Norway and Sweden, in the great, extensive, and 

 moist pine woods, filled with bogs and morasses, which 

 cover these wild countries ; but probably a still greater 

 number breed further north, in Lapland, Finland, 

 Russia, and Siberia. It is, I believe, a fable, that they 

 ever raise their young habitually in the high Alpine or 

 mountainous countries of the central or southern 

 parts of Europe. These countries, indeed, in summer 

 are very little fitted for their feeding; they cannot 

 bore where it is either dry or frosty, and the glacier, 

 as well as the arid sand or rock, are equally unfitted 

 for their haunts. They leave the north with the first 

 frost, and travel slowly south still they come to their 

 accustomed winter quarters ; they do not usually make 

 a quick voyage, but fly from wood to wood, reposing 

 and feeding on their journey : they prefer for their 

 haunts, woods near marshes or morasses; they hide 

 themselves under thick bushes in the day, and fly 

 abroad to feed in the dusk of the evening. A laurel, 

 or a holly-bush, is a favourite place for their repose : 

 the thick and varnished leaves of these trees prevents 

 the radiation of heat from the soil, and they are less 

 affected by the refrigerating influence of a clear sky, so 

 that they afford a warm seat for the woodcock. Wood- 

 cocks usually begin to fly north on the first approach 

 of spring, and their flights are generally longer, and 

 their rests fewer, at this season than in the autumn. 

 In the autumn they are driven from the north to the 

 south by the want of food, and they stop wherever they 

 can find food. In the spring there is the influence of 

 another powerful instinct added to this, the sexual 

 feeling. They migrate in pairs, and pass as speedily as 

 possible to the place where they are likely to find food. 



