370 MIGRATION OF WOODCOCKS. 



departure from America? The answer is decisive of the 

 contrary, the American Woodcock being entirely different 

 from the British species. Having said thus much, we 

 think some light may be thrown upon this obscure 

 subject, by examining the above facts, and comparing 

 them with some others, which are equally well known, 

 about Woodcocks. 



In the first place, their lean, poor, and often scurfy 

 condition, is not owing to exhaustion from length of 

 flight; because, not only those which are found on the 

 eastern coast, are usually very weak and reduced, but 

 even those which are killed in Norway, before the migra- 

 tion has taken place, are found to be already in an 

 emaciated state, and infested with vermin. In a short 

 time, however, after frequenting their favourite haunts 

 in our country, they become fat and plump, and then, as 

 the season advances, they usually fall off and the flesh of 

 those that have been accidentally met with in the Summer 

 si found to be hard and dry. That their fatigue may be 

 the consequence of this previous debility, is therefore 

 not improbable; but it is not the cause. We will next 

 touch upon their first appearance on our western instead 

 of our eastern shores. It is a generally prevailing opinion 

 that the state of the moon has much to do with the arrival 

 and departure of Woodcocks; but more experienced 

 naturalists have remarked that the wind, and not the 

 moon, determines the time of their arrival, which is 

 usually in misty weather, during the northerly or easterly 

 winds. Supposing, then, that about dusk, and we know 

 that the migrations of Woodcocks usually, if not in- 

 variably, take place at night, a flight of them starts from 

 Norway, with a sharp northerly or easterly wind helping 

 them, in adding to the natural velocity of their own most 

 rapid flight, which has been estimated at one hundred 

 and fifty miles per hour, high up in the air, as we more- 

 over know, they fly, the land below them, when they 

 had crossed the Channel, would be invisible, and, borne 

 upon the breeze, by the time they had continued their 



