UPLAND SHOOTING. 211 



and, with tlie sole exception that it is entirely useless to look 

 for him in coppices, or along springy wootlsides, as I have re- 

 coninieiidod in wild weather in spring, his haunts and habits 

 nil' precisely the same. 



He is more settled, not being now hurried in point of time, 

 or busied about the pleasures of courtship, or the cares of nidi- 

 fication. He lies harder before the dog, does not fly so far 

 when flushed, and feels little or no inclination to ramble about, 

 but adheres steadily to one feeding ground, unless driven away 

 from it by persecution, until the hard frosts of winter compel 

 him to betake himself to the rice-fields of Georgia, and the 

 muddy margins of the warm savannah. 



Moreover, the weather itself being at this time steadier, and 

 less mutable, the birds are much less often forced to move from 

 one part of the country to another, by the fitness or unfitness of 

 the ground. In spring one year the meadows are too wet, and 

 anotlier perhaps too dry, — both conditions being at times car- 

 ried to such an excess, as to drive the birds off" altogether, from 

 the impossibility of feeding or lying comfortably. In the autumn 

 this is rarely, if ever, the case ; and although autumn shooting 

 is, of course, in some degree variable — Snipe being more abun- 

 dant one year than another — it never has occurred, within my 

 obsenation, that the flight passes on altogether without pausing, 

 or giving some chance of sport, more or less, as is not very un- 

 usually the consequence of a series of droughts or rains in the 

 spring. 



The Woodcock, on his return from the northward, or his des- ^', I A, ft.. 

 cent from the mnmtain-tops, nevei', as a general rule, returns 

 precisely to the same feeding grounds which he prefers in sum- 

 mer, during the extreme heats, but appears to prefer dry hill- ^p-ct-t^e) < 

 sides, sloping to the sun, southerly or westward, and to choose - /■ »• 

 woods of young saplings, or sprouts, as they are commonly 

 called in tliis country, tall, wet maple groves, and second 

 growth of oak, adjacent to brook or meadow feeding groundjs, 

 rather than the dense coppice, and that variety of brakes and in- 

 tervales, or glades, which he loves the best in July. Thispecu- 



^/o. 



