162 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



thereafter drop into the rushes. On both of these occasions, the 

 birds hghted many times on the very topmost branches of the 

 willows, and other trees, which lined the fences ; and on one oc- 

 casion, 1 saw a Snipe take flight from a branch, rise upward, 

 and resume his drumming, without first returning to the level 

 ground. 



On the day when I first witnessed these performances, which 

 astonished me, I confess, little less than it would have done had 

 they begun to sing " God save the King," or " Hail Columbia," 

 which would perhaps have been more appropriate — I observed 

 that when, at length, they ceased drumming, which they did as 

 the day grew hotter, they all flew off" in one direction, toward 

 some meadows overrun with brakes, cat-briars, brambles and 

 thorn bushes ; and herein I had good sport with them for seve- 

 ral hours, after having despaired, in the morning, of getting a 

 shot at all. 



Since that time, I have repeatedly found them in similar 

 ground at Chatham, yet higher up on the course of the Passaic, 

 where there is a great deal of covert of that particular nature- 

 low stunted bushes, and briar patches, growing in boggy, springy 

 ground. So notoriously is it the case that Snipe, on their first 

 coming, there frequent such localities, whenever the weather is 

 not more than commonly warm and genial, that it is the habit 

 of many old sportsmen to beat for them regularly in such places, 

 without trying the meadows at all, on their first arrival. I have 

 killed hundreds of couples in such places ; and have put up 

 scores, at a small enumeration, of Woodcock, tlien sitting on their 

 eggs, from the self-same coverts at the same time. Indeed, the 

 same brakes, a little later in the season, afford the very best 

 cock-shooting. Once, and once only, at the same place, Chat- 

 ham, during a snow-squall, I shot several couple of Snipe in a 

 very thick piece of swampy woodland, among tall timber-trees 

 with heavy undercovert — precisely what one would call admi- 

 rable summer Cock-ground — the Snipe flew in and out of the 

 brakes, and thridded the branches, as rapidly as Quail or Cock 

 would have done, in similar thickets. What has happened 



