ADDITIONAL NOTES. 285 



winter, always return to it, if possible, the next season. Many 

 woodcocks breed in Norway and Sweden in the great, extensive, 

 and moist pine woods, filled with bogs and morasses, which 

 cover these wild countries, but probably a still greater number 

 breed further north, in Lapland, Finland, Russia, and Siberia. 

 It is I believe a fable, that they ever raise their young habitually 

 in the high Alpine or mountainous countries of the central or 

 southern parts of Europe. These countries indeed in summer 

 are very little fitted for their feeding ; they cannot bore where 

 it is either dry or frosty, and the glacier, as well as the arid 

 sand or rock, are equally unfitted for their haunts. They leave 

 the north with the first frost, and travel slowly south till they 

 come to their accustomed winter quarters ; they do not usually 

 make a quick voyage, but fly from wood to wood, reposing and 

 feeding on their journey ; they prefer for their haunts, woods 

 near marshes or morasses ; they hide themselves under thick' 

 bushes in the day, and fly abroad to feed in the dusk of the 

 evening. A laurel, or holly-bush, is a favourite place for their 

 repose : the thick and varnished leaves of these trees prevents 

 the radiation of heat from the soil, and they are less affected by 

 the refrigerating influence of a clear sky, so that they afford a 

 warm seat for the woodcock. Woodcocks usually begin to fly 

 north on the first approach of spring, and their flights are 

 generally longer, and their rests fewer, at this season than in 

 the autumn. In the autumn they are driven from the north to 

 the south by the want of food, and they stop wherever they can 

 find food. In the spring, there is the influence of another 

 powerful instinct added to this, the sexual feeling. They 

 migrate in pairs, and pass as speedily as possible to the place 

 where they are likely to find food, and to raise their young, and 

 of which the old birds have already had the experience of 

 former years. Scarcely any woodcocks winter in any part of 

 Germany. In France there are a few found, particularly in the 

 southern provinces, and in Normandy and Brittany. The woods 

 of England, especially of the west and south, contain always a 

 certain quantity of woodcocks, but there are far more in the 

 moist soil and warmer climate of Ireland ; but in the woods of 

 southern Italy and Greece, near marshes, they are far more 

 abundant ; and they extend in quantities over the Greek Islands, 

 Asia Minor, and northern Africa. 



