198 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
the bird showing little signs of shyness, and allowing me 
to approach cleeely before taking wing. 
The little Jack Snipe (S. gallinula) is icoaceaiedth 
met with in the winter. Like the larger species, it will 
frequently return to the spot from which it is roused. 
It seems possessed of a secret worth knowing—viz., how 
to live well, for it is always in good condition, and never 
seems to suffer even in the hardest frosts. In the severe 
winter of 1849-50, when fieldfares and redwings, through 
the lung continuance of the frost, were so greatly ema- 
ciated as to be little else than skin and bone, allowing 
themselves to be approached within two or three yards, 
a jack snipe was brought to me which surpassed any I 
ever saw. I skinned it for preserving, and found its 
whole body covered with a layer of solid fat to the depth 
of a quarter of an inch—not a bad protection against — 
intense cold. 
That bird of singular habits and note, the Landrail 
(Crex pratensis), visits us in abundance every year, 
sometimes arriving as early as the Ist of May, while in 
1853 I did not hear its note until the 18th. This was 
unusually late, the season being a remarkably cold and 
backward one, a fact of which our other migratory birds 
also seemed, in some mysterious way, to be fully cog- 
nizant. Nothing, indeed, relating to the feathered tribes 
is more wonderful or more deserving of our admiration 
than that knowledge, call it instinct or what you will, 
which, implanted in them by their Creator, enables them 
’ to hasten or delay their departure for their distant but 
temporary places of abode, according as the seasons there 
are suitable to their necessities or otherwise. How 
strikingly is this wisdom brought forward in Holy 
Scripture to shame man’s neglect and ingratitude ! 
\ 
a - 
4 “? 
I 
