44 ^ Book of the Snipe, 



Jack-Snipe are pure migrants. No specimen 

 has ever been known to breed in these islands, 

 though reports of the discovery of their nests 

 are regular hardy annuals of ornithological 

 fallacies. A few individual birds, as previously 

 mentioned, have been seen late in the spring, 

 but, like the appearance of a dandy in St 

 James Street in August, the circumstance has 

 been owing to some special and abnormal 

 reason. The birds breed in northern latitudes, 

 their most northerly limit, in Scandinavia and 

 Siberia, being one degree more northerly than 

 that of the Full-Snipe. Did not creatures still 

 more frail — e.g., the tits — astonish us by the 

 distances of their migration, it would seem im- 

 possible for a pair of wings so feeble to carry 

 their owner across the perils of hundreds of 

 miles. Still more surprising is it when we 

 find the bird to be of so sluggish and indo- 

 lent a nature that the discharge of guns, the 

 shouting of sportsmen, and the bustling of 

 dogs will scarcely induce it to fly a dozen 

 yards even if unwounded, often, indeed, failing 

 altogether to stir it after its first perfunctory 



