QUAIL-WOODCOCK-SNIPE, 195 



can any one expect a good show of game where there are no 

 real gamekeepers, and every peasant is a poacher ? 



The Quail is so rare in Sweden as hardly to be worth- 

 noticing in this list. Land rails, however, are common 

 everywhere. 



The Woodcock and Snipes. We now come to a class of 

 birds that are more independent of man, than any of those 

 we have mentioned, and not so easily shot out. The 

 woodcock does not go up into Lapland, and the principal 

 breeding haunts are the midland forests. The crack 

 woodcock shooting is certainly on the southern and western 

 coasts, during the periods of migration, especially in the 

 autumn. The coverts there are better suited to them than 

 our midland forests, and as we only find them before 

 they pack, we never make much of a bag in Wermland. I 

 recollect some years ago dropping in with a large flight in 

 Scania, in the end of October, and, if I remember right, I 

 bagged twenty-one woodcocks, one hare, and one black 

 cock, and left off for want of powder. I got them in a large 

 patch of oak stubs of perhaps a hundred acres, and I saw so 

 many birds, that I am sure I could bave bagged twenty-five 

 brace to my own gun, had light and ammunition served me. 

 Next day I beat the same ground well, and did not see six 

 couple of cocks. The wind had shifted in the night. I 

 generally shoot them here when they are roading, and in a 

 good stand can often kill three or four in an evening. 

 A friend in Gothenburg wrote me word that, in the spring 

 of 1864, he killed forty woodcocks round that place when 

 they first came over. I know there is some pretty good 

 cock ground round Gothenburg. 



The Great Snipe. There is something mysterious about 

 this bird, and there is no telling with any certainty here 

 how many you may bag in a day. Whether they are decreas- 

 ing in numbers or not I cannot say, but this I know, we see 

 very few now in the middle of the country. I never yet 

 found out rightly where they chiefly breed, but I am certain 

 some at least do in the middle of the country, for I have 

 received the eggs from North Wermland, and shot very young 



