66 SNIPES. 



any remarks oil such a restless tribe ; and, when once the 

 young begin to appear, it is all confusion; there is no 

 distinction of genus, species, or sex. 



In breeding time, snipes play over the moors, piping and 

 humming ; they always hum as they are descending. Is 

 not their hum ventriloquous, like that of the turkey ? Some 

 suspect that it is made by their wings. 



turned again to his work of battering the frame of his cage, the sound from 

 which, both in loudness and prolongation of noise, is only to be compared to 

 the efforts of a fashionable footman, upon a fashionable door, in a fashionable 

 square. He had a particular fancy for the extremities of the corner pillars of 

 the cage ; on these he spent his most elaborate taps, and, at this moment, 

 though he onlv occupied the cage a day, the wood is pierced and worn like a 

 piece of old worm-eaten timber. He probably had an idea, that if those main- 

 beams could once be penetrated, the rest of the superstructure would fall, and 

 free him. Against the doorway he had also a particular spite, and once suc- 

 ceeded in opening it ; and when, to interpose a further obstacle, it was tied in 

 a double knot with a string, the perpetual application of his beak quickly 

 unloosed it. In ordinary cages, a circular hole is left in the wire for the bird 

 to insert his head to drink from a glass ; to this hole the nuthatch constantly 

 repaired, not for the purpose of drinking, but to try to push out more than his 

 head : but in vain, for he is a thick bird and rather heavily built ; but the 

 instant he found the hole too small, he would withdraw his head, and begin to 

 dig and hammer at the circle, where it is rooted in the wood, with his pick-axe 

 of a beak, evidently with a design to enlarge the orifice. His labour was 

 incessant, and he ate as largely as he worked ; and, I fear, it was the united 

 efforts of both that killed him. His hammering was peculiarly laborious ; for 

 he did not peck as other birds do, but, grasping his hold with his immense feet, 

 he turned upon them as upon a pivot, and struck with the whole weight of his 

 body ; thus assuming the appearance, with his entire form, of the head of a 

 hammer ; or, as I have sometimes seen birds in mechanical clocks, made to 

 strike the hour by swinging on a wheel. We were in hopes that when the sun 

 went down, he would cease from his labours and rest ; but no. At the interval 

 of every ten minutes, up to nine or ten in the night, he resumed his knocking, 

 and strongly reminded us of the coffin-maker's nightly and dreary occupation. 

 It was said by one of us, * he is nailing his own coffin ;' and so it proved. An 

 awful fluttering in the cage, now covered with a handkerchief, announced that 

 something was wrong : and we found him at the bottom of his prison, with his 

 feathers ruffled and nearly all turned back. He was taken out, and for some 

 time he lingered away in convulsions, and occasional brightenings up. At 

 length he drew his last gasp : and will it be believed, that tears were shed on 

 his demise ? The fact is, that the apparent intelligence of his character, the 

 speculation in his eye, the assiduity of his labour, and his most extraordinary 

 fearlessness and familiarity, though coupled with fierceness, gave us a considera- 

 tion for him that may appear ridiculous to those who have never so nearly 

 observed the ways of an animal as to feel interested in its fate. With us it 

 was different." W. J. 



