io8 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



in the ground, usually in a sheltered place with a lining of dead 

 leaves which is added during the hatching. It is not always near 

 a marshy or wet place, where the food can be procured by the 

 bird probing the soft ground with its bill, but is sometimes in dry 

 situations ; and it is now well known that the woodcock has the 

 power of carrying its offspring from its nesting place to the 

 feeding ground, the young bird being carried by being clasped 

 between the thigh and body of the parent. The food of the old 

 birds consists almost exclusively of common earth worms, and 

 their appetite is enormous. One naturalist attempted to keep 

 three woodcocks in confinement, and found it almost impossible 

 to obtain for them a sufficient supply of the large earth worms, 

 even by the continuous labours of one man. The custom of eat- 

 ing the trail of the woodcock, under which name the intestines are 

 disguised, is one which would hardly be credited were it not well 

 known, and if gourmands knew the conditions under which its 

 food is sometimes obtained, it would hardly be practised. 



There are a set of birds known pre-eminently as the Divers. 

 Three species are natives of Great Britain, breeding occasionally 

 in the north of Scotland and the adjacent islands on moors and 

 waste places. One of the most beautiful of these is the great 

 Northern Diver, which is so common that not less than thirty birds 

 have been seen during one winter in Plymouth Sound ; it is also 

 abundant around the Hebrides at all seasons of the year. Except 

 during the breeding season these Divers live at sea, obtaining their 

 food from the shoals of herrings, sprats, and other small fish, which 

 they catch with great ease and certainty, their progress under water 

 being extremely rapid ; it has been said they fly with the velocity 

 of an arrow in the air. Occasionally they seek their food at great 



