42 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



About the middle of February the severity of 

 the season abated. The mercury rose to a genial 

 mark; the sky became beautifully clear and 

 cloudless ; the ground thawed ; the snow rapidly 

 disappeared ; and in a few days the notes of the 

 song-sparrow and the blue-bird, gave cheering 

 intimations of the near approach of spring. 



Some old farmers in our vicinity professed 

 little faith in the assurances of these welcome 

 visitors. Sagely shaking their heads, they hus- 

 banded their hay-stacks, as they still looked 

 askant at the hills and the blue air ; but as the 

 weather, uninfluenced by their forebodings, still 

 continued mild, we made much of every war- 

 bled note, and turned a deaf ear to the croakers, 

 willing to believe that the Solomons of meadow 

 and upland were mistaken for once. 



About this period we received, through the 

 village post office, a note from an acquaintance 

 in town, with an enclosed dispatch from old 

 Pierson of the Pier, announcing, in his usual 

 emphatic way, that the meadows above and be- 

 low Pennsgrove, New Jersey, were fairly alive 

 with snipe. 



We had already observed woodcock flying in 

 the evening twilight, and began to flush them, 

 by day, in a woods of some extent, where they 



