124 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



an hour would occasionally elapse before the 

 return of either of the merlins — sometimes more, 

 sometimes less — but they never seemed willing 

 to give up the sport until at least three snipes 

 had fallen to their own share. 



The jack-snipes {Scolopax gallinula) which 

 were tolerably abundant, but which I seldom 

 considered worth shooting, used to endeavour to 

 evade the deadly stroke of the merlin in a very 

 different manner from that adopted by the com- 

 mon or "fuir' snipe, as it is there termed, and 

 with far greater success. Difficult to spring at 

 all times, it was almost impossible to start this 

 cunning little fellow from the heath when his 

 enemy was on the wing: indeed, without the 

 co-operation of Pluto the attempt would have 

 been utterly futile; but when the steady gaze 

 of that infallible quadruped continued to be rivet- 

 ted on a particular bit of ground, on every inch 

 of which you had already trod except the very 

 one under his nose ; then might you have staked 

 your existence that on that identical spot a jack- 

 snipe lay squatted, and when at last discovered 

 and started, instead of flying boldly away and 

 endeavouring to escape by power of wing, this 

 little fellow would perform a puzzling, zigzag 

 sort of movement for forty or fifty yards, utterly 

 mystifying the merlin, and then suddenly drop- 



