144 FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



southerly wind abroad to dry the herbage and to give the dogs a 

 chance of scenting their game. 



As the stranger cannot thus choose, it is most important that 

 he should know how to make the best of bad circumstances ; for 

 even in the worst weather, if there be birds at all upon his range, 

 knowing his ground and the habits of his bird, he will be able, 

 nine times out often, to make a fair day's work. 



I once shot three successive days over the Long Meadow, 

 Lewises, the Troy and Parsippany Meadows, from Pine Brook, 

 with a friend, in the very worst weather I ever saw for Snipe- 

 shooting — dry, keen, cutting north-easters, with the dust flying 

 one half hour, and the sun shining clear but cold, and hailstones 

 pelting down the next. The birds were, of course, as wild as 

 can be imagined ; drumming high up in the air, and performing 

 all kinds of unusual antics ; yet, by dint of good dogs, desperate 

 fagging, and a perfect knowledge of our ground, we picked up 

 sixty-two couple of Snipe, besides a few Duck, in the course 

 of three days. 



No great work, it is true, nor much to boast of; but, mark me 

 now — during those same three days, two other gentlemen, as good 

 shots as ourselves, perhaps better, beat the same meadows, put- 

 ting up at the rival tavern, and hunting so exactly the same line 

 of country Avith ourselves, that we met and conversed with them 

 more than once each day. These gentlemen bagged, in all, 

 eleven Snipe and a Sandpiper ; and that for the simplest reason 

 imaginable — they did not know where to look for Snipe in wild 

 weather, while we did. 



It is, of course, unnecessary to tell any person acquainted with 

 the first elements of Shooting, that the Snipe feeds, not on suc- 

 tion, but on small worms and other insects, which he collects by 

 boring in moist earth with his long sensitive bill. His favorite 

 feeding-grounds are, therefore, soft, sloppy tracts, where the soil 

 is rich vegetable loam, or bog-earth, interspersed with springs, 

 and sparsely covered with low, succulent grasses ; — earth, from 

 the surface of which the waters have recently subsided, and on 

 which a muddy, rust-colored scum has been deposited, on their 



