32 A Book of the Snipe. 



produces the sound so exactly Imitated by the 

 four motor cylinders pulsating a thousand 

 times a minute on the man-made flier of the 

 highroad. 



There is no situation more uncanny than 

 a marsh resounding with the throbbing of 

 the snipe before the break of day. I well 

 remember the uneasiness of a little spaniel 

 I once took out to assist at the morning 

 flight of duck from a lonely mere to their 

 day haunt, a protected bay of an island off 

 the coast of Ireland. On this particular 

 morning I was far too early, and had to sit 

 upon my bundle of sodden reeds a full hour 

 before the first smell of the morning came 

 to warn the fowl to quit their midnight 

 pastures. But during that hour the snipe 

 woke up and began one by one to drum to 

 each other in the darkness,^ until soon a 

 thousand gloomy rumblings filled the air, 

 sometimes from a height, sometimes ap- 

 parently within a few inches of where the 



^ This was on a certain February 14, the earliest date on 

 which I have ever heard the drumming of the snipe. 



