126 GRALLATORES, SCOLOPAX. SNIPE. 



covered, scarcely equalling by one half the bulk of the 

 Common Snipe, its length averaging about eight inches, and 

 its usual weight, when in full condition, seldom exceeding 

 Periodical two ounces and a quarter. With us it is a periodical winter 

 visitant, yigjtan^ j ts summe r retreat being in much higher northern 

 latitudes, where it nidificates and breeds in the vast swamps 

 of those desolate regions. The first flights generally arrive 

 as early as in the second week of September, as I have sel- 

 dom failed to meet with it in a favourite haunt between the 

 14th and 20th of that month. Its stay is usually prolonged 

 to the end of February, or beginning of March, according 

 to the rigour of the season ; it then quits us for polar lati- 

 tudes, and the desertion seems, in the case of this bird, to 

 be very general, I may say universal, for I have not suc- 

 ceeded hitherto in detecting a single instance of its remain- 

 ing during the summer, or breeding in any of our fens ; nor 

 do any of our writers on this branch of natural history men- 

 tion an authenticated fact of this kind. I have, indeed, been 

 told at different times of Jack Snipes to be seen in certain 

 bogs, as well as their nests and eggs, but these, in every 

 instance, proved on investigation to be Dunlins or Purres 

 (Tringa variabilis of TEMMINCK) ; which is a bird nearly 

 of the same size, and in its summer plumage, and on the 

 wing, very liable to be mistaken for the Judcock. The re- 

 sort of this Snipe is always to the softest and most miry 

 parts of bogs, where vegetation has made but partial ad- 

 vances ; and in the uncovered places of these it probes for 

 Food, its food, consisting of small aquatic worms and insects, and 

 its bill (which measures about one inch and a half in length) 

 possesses the same delicacy of feeling, being furnished with 

 the same nervous and muscular apparatus as the other spe- 

 cies of this genus. This bird sits very close, and will allow 

 itself to be almost trodden upon before it can be forced upon 

 wing ; its flight then is more direct, and without the twist- 

 ing evolutions of the common species, resembling that of the 

 Woodcock, when flying in open space, the wings being con- 



