BAY-SHOOTING. 273 



for the sport, taking a chance at them from Egg Harbor 

 skiffs, with heavy guns and quantum sufficit of No. 4 or 

 No. 5 shot, in spite of hot suns and innumerable mosquitoes. 



I said that these birds were improperly called bay- 

 snipe, and they are so ; for the only bird which is nearly 

 connected with the true snipes, is the first or almost the 

 first which arrives among us, the red-breasted snipe, Sco- 

 lopax Noveboraccusisy better, though barbarously known 

 as the " dowitcher," the " quail snipe," and the " brown 

 back," according to the various places in which he chances 

 to be shot. Even this bird, however, is not a genuine 

 snipe, but comes properly under the genus Macrorhampus, 

 and has no name of his own in the vernacular. 



The other species, generally included under the com- 

 prehensive name of bay-snipe, comprise the curlews, 

 three kinds of which visit us in the spring, and return 

 again early in the autumn. The great or long-billed cur- 

 lew, Numenius longirostris, whose portrait is prefixed ; 

 the short-billed, or Hudsonian curlew, Numenius Hudso- 

 nicus, nearly resembling the former, but smaller in size, 

 and, as his name indicates, shorter i' the neb than his con- 

 gener ; and lastly, the Esquimaux curlew, Numenius 

 Borealis, who is commonly known, heaven knows why, as 

 the jutes and the doe-bird ; and who, feeding often on 

 the upland in company with the golden plover, a likeness 

 of whom is annexed, is a bird delicate, succulent, and 

 well flavored on the table, which may not be said of most 

 of the breed, which, to speak truth, are for the most part 

 intolerably rank and sedgy ; though there be exceptions, 

 which shall be named with honor. 

 12* 



