UPLAND SHOOTING. 139 



the winter has been uncertain open and variable, and when the 

 months of January and February have been, as was the case in 

 1843, unusually mild and genial, there is, as it were, no spring 

 at all, winter lingering into the lap of June. In the year above 

 mentioned, the ground was white with snow in Philadel])hia on 

 the first of that month. 



In the former of these two kinds of spring, the Snipe compose 

 themselves for a long sojourn, lie well to the dog, grow very fat 

 and lazy, and defer their departure till the weather becomes so 

 warm and dry as to render their migration a matter of necessity. 

 As an example of this, in the sj)ring of 1836 I drove from New 

 York into Orange county, on the 10th of April, in a sleigh, over 

 deep snow ; and, within a week afterward, and thence up to the 

 10th of June, shot Snipe in abundance in New Jersey, both at 

 Chatham and Pine Brook, on the Passaic. 



In the latter there is sometimes no spring shooting at all ; the 

 birds merely alighting in ichisps or small parties, from five to 

 twenty in number, remaining a single day, and then off again 

 Northward, with no tarrying. 



For several years, latterly, spring Snipe-shooting has been so 

 indifferent, that few sportsmen have followed it, and that the mar- 

 kets have been badly supplied. 



The arrival, however, of the Snipe in New Jersey — in South- 

 ern New York there is little good Snipe-ground — varies from the 

 tenth of March, which is the earliest date at which I have ever 

 seen them plentiful on the Upland meadows, to the fifteenth of 

 April. If they have not arrived at the latter of these dates, it 

 may generally be taken for granted, that the year will have no 

 spring Snipe-shooting. 



It must be observed that obtaining great sport in spring Snipe- 

 shooting must always, to those M-ho do not reside immediately on 

 the ground, be more or less a matter of good fortune ; since it is 

 not above once, in five or six years, that these birds come on and 

 stajj^ under such favorable circumstances, as cause them to settle, as 

 it is termed, to the ground ; and, when this is not the case, succes- 

 sive tlights arriving, tarrying for a few days and passing onward, 



