WOODCOCK FIRE-HUNTING. 231 
an available light in a circle of about twenty yards in 
diameter. Parties are frequently made up who hunt 
during a given number of hours, and the destruction of 
the birds on these occasions is almost beyond belief. 
These parties afford rare sport, and are often kept 
up all night. | 
When this is the case, the sportsman not unfre- 
quently sleeps to so late an hour in the day that he has 
only time to rise, sip a cup of strong coffee, and leisurely 
dress for dinner, when it is announced as ready, and 
woodcock, plentiful to wasting, are smoking on the board 
before him. 
Such a dinner, the dullest intellect can imagine, is a 
repast both for sense and soul;—for woodcock and wit 
are Synonymous. 
