98 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



most acute of all the other faculties; and in the 

 case of the woodcock, as before remarked, the 

 eyes are unusually large and full, and set high 

 in the skull to enlarge the field of vision by the 

 reception of the faintest ray of light which may 

 enter the dark coverts in which they feed ; so 

 that if we suppose that our woodcock, while 

 standing in his striking attitude over the holes 

 he had bored when the worms were buried be- 

 yond his reach, was actually scenting their pecu- 

 liar odor, listening to their movements in the 

 earth like the woodpecker to those of the in- 

 sects which his death-taps on the surface have 

 started from the interior of the hollow limb and 

 watching for them to crawl up in his sight or 

 within the length of his bill, we then have a 

 combination of four faculties admirably adapted 

 to the support of this bird in its wild state, when, 

 from its powers of digestion and the nature of its 

 prey, it is known to require a prodigious quan- 

 tity of food. 



Woodcock have been killed at all hours of the 

 day, and yet those who have examined their ali- 

 mentary parts will tell you that they rarely found 

 a worm even in their crops, and never in their 

 stomachs ; hence the old and prevalent idea that 

 they abstracted the substance of the worm by 



