SCARCE IN SCANDINAVIA. 187 



them for their collections — if any person who entertains 

 the singular notion in question were to see the boundless 

 northern forests, I feel convinced he would agree with me 

 in saying that, even if the whole of the scanty population 

 of that part of the world were to turn out for the express 

 purpose of searching for the eggs of this bird, they would 

 not be able to explore a hundredth part of the woods in 

 the course of the year. 



If Woodcocks be now really scarcer in Great Britain 

 than in olden times — and the same complaint is made in 

 other countries — the diminution is probably attributable 

 to the increased number of gunners (in Sweden, at least, 

 ten people shoot nowadays to one formerly), and to the 

 murderous war everywhere carried on against those birds. 

 But let the decrease in their numbers arise from what 

 cause it may, certain it is that the egg-sucking crotchet 

 has nothing to do with it. 



Many sportsmen and others, both in Scandinavia and 

 Denmark, believe that two species of Woodcocks exist in 

 the Peninsula ; viz., the common kind, and that answering 

 to the Stein-Schnepfe * of the Germans, a new species, or 

 variety, which Bechstein thus describes : — " It is nearly 

 one-third less than the common species, of a darker colour, 

 and marked with closer black spots and bars ; has bluish 

 legs, and a shorter and ash-grey coloured neck. Its flight 

 is more rapid, and its home would seem to be the cold 

 mountainous regions of the high North, because it comes 

 to us later in the autumn and returns earlier in the spring 

 than the common Woodcock." 



May not naturalists and others be splitting hairs 



'" I myself have occasionally shot diminutive Woodcocks in Sweden, 

 answering in the main to Bechstein's Stein-Schnepfe, and one of which is 

 now in the Gothenburg Museum ; but in shape and make little ditferencr 

 was observable between them and the common Woodcock — not sutEcieut, 

 certaiuly, to entitle them to l)e considered a separate species. 



