THE JACK SNIPE. 



dency toward association, either in flocks, family 

 parties, or pairs; but the individuals of this 

 species pass a large portion of their lives retired 

 and alone, two of them being rarely, or perhaps 

 never, found in company, except in the breed- 

 ing season. They are supposed to pair and raise 

 their young in the deep marshy tracts or reedy 

 districts of the fen-counties, which afford conceal- 

 ment from every prying eye, and safety from all 

 common injuries. Driven by the frosts of winter 

 from these watery tracts, their summer's covert, 

 they separate, and seek for food in more favoured 

 situations, preferring a little, lonely, open spring, 

 trickling from the side of a hill, tangled with grass 

 and foliage, or some shallow, rushy streamlet in a 

 retired valley. Having fixed on such a place, they 

 seldom abandon it long, or quit it for another ; and 

 though roused from it, and fired at repeatedly 

 through the day, neither the noise nor any sense of 

 danger seems to alarm them ; and, if we should 

 seek for the little judcock on an ensuing morning, 

 we find it at its spring again. The indifference 

 with which it endures this daily persecution is 

 amazing. It will afford amusement or vexation 

 to the young sportsman throughout the whole 

 Christmas vacation; and, from the smallness of 

 its body, will finally often escape from all its diurnal 

 dangers. The rail, and several other birds, con- 

 fide for safety more in their legs than their wings, 



