26 A Book of the Snipe. 



and hand, which have grown accustomed for 



years to dealing with the flash of brown 



lightning of the Common Snipe. I only once 



flushed a Great Snipe, and the recollection of 



how I sent two charges of shot the length 



of a church 171 front of it, never to see the 



bird again, is to this day, to misquote 



Wordsworth, 



" The memory of Earth's bitter leaven 

 Effaced never." 



The Great Snipe has never nested in the 

 British Islands, Holland being the nearest 

 point at which it breeds. It is but an autumn 

 coasting migrant, a few individuals turning 

 aside from the great flights which skirt our 

 shores on their way southward from Northern 

 Europe in September and October. It is, 

 however, a perfectly regular visitor, and must 

 therefore be considered a genuinely British 

 bird : the numbers of occurrences of its being 

 shot by autumn sportsmen are far too numer- 

 ous to record individually. I have heard of 

 but few specimens being seen or obtained 

 later than October, and probably these were 



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