WOODCOCK, SNIPE, AND PLOVER. 269 



of living by suction has been exploded for a long 

 time ; it was once firmly believed in. A tame wood- 

 cock will dispose of as many worms in reason as you 

 like to give him. To speak of tame woodcocks, 

 snipes, and sandpipers sounds rather an anomaly ; 

 but some of our sportsmen naturalists have kept all 

 these, and with success. 



The mists of tradition that have hung over natural 

 life are slowly clearing away ; soon a mass of litera- 

 ture that has been bolstered up and foisted on a con- 

 fiding public will be only waste paper. The " gentle 

 reader" has been bidden to accompany the author to 

 the outermost Hebrides or to the mist-covered moun- 

 tains of Scotland to see such and such a bird in its 

 native haunts, when one could see the same bird, 

 perfectly at home, in one's own neighbourhood. Of 

 course Scotland, and Ireland more especially, are the 

 great breeding and gathering places for the snipe 

 family ; but they do not all go there. There are 

 morasses and bogs in the southern counties of Eng- 

 land where the birds congregate in large numbers. 



One great bog I knew that used to be covered with 

 dwarf bushes of alder, flags, and rushes, with mosses 

 and the plants that thrive in such spots : it was with- 



