WOODCOCK. 331 



" Lady Peyton's brother, the late Lord Stradbroke, then 

 Sir John Rous, told me (Lord Braybrooke), he recollected 

 arriving at Downham, Sir Henry Peyton's residence, twenty- 

 four hours after the Woodcock was shot, and hearing the 

 particulars ; but the bird had been dressed. 



" The Earl of Leicester also told me, that he, in company 

 with Mr. Ealph Dutton, when they were young men, followed 

 a gigantic-looking Woodcock for some hours, near Holkham, 

 but could not get near him." 



In the early part of the sixteenth century the Woodcock 

 was valued at less than the Golden Plover, and even now it is 

 little esteemed as food by the peasants in Norway and some 

 other parts of Europe. In the fifth Earl of Northumber- 

 land's ' Household Book,' begun in 1512, the price of a Wood- 

 cock is stated to be one penny or three-halfpence ; and in 

 the L'Estrange 'Household Book,' so frequently quoted here, 

 the reward for four Woodcocks on the 18th of October, is 

 fourpence ; and in another instance, for three Woodcocks, 

 sixpence. By the time of Willughby (1688) the bird was, 

 however, better appreciated, and in his ' Ornithology ' we find 

 the well-known couplet : — 



" If the Partridge had the Woodcock's thigh, 

 'Twould be the best bird that ever did fly." 



Shakespeare's works contain many allusions to the stu- 

 pidity of the Woodcock, and the gins and springes to which 

 it fell an easy victim. 



The Faeroe Islands appear to be outside the line of the 

 westward migration of the Woodcock, for, according to Major 

 Feilden, it has only once been observed there, but in Nor- 

 way it is common from spring to autumn up to the Arctic 

 Circle, and straggles a little further north. The vast forests 

 of Norway, Sweden, and some portions of Russia are, in fact, 

 its principal breeding quarters in Europe, and large numbers 

 are annually reared there, in spite of the unsportsmanlike 



sible to quote the late Mr. Gould, who remarked, in reference to a Woodcock shot 

 near Halifax in 1861, and said to have turned the scale at twenty ounces — "A 

 bird of this weight I have never seen." 



