THE AMERICAN SNIPE. 



Scolopax Wilsonii. 



THE ENGLISH SNIPE. 



IT is a singular thing, and one which elucidates the 

 great research necessary, and the extreme difficulties en- 

 countered, in the attempt to establish facts of natural 

 history with regard to birds of passage, that this beauti- 

 ful little bird, the general favorite of the sportsman and 

 the epicure, well known to all classes of men, and a vis- 

 itant, in some one of its closely allied varieties, of every 

 known nation, is still a mystery, as regards some of its 

 habits, and continues to baffle the inquiries of the most 

 learned and inquisitive ornithologists. 



Its habits, the nature of its food, and therefore the ne- 

 cessities of its existence, render it an inhabitant of tem- 

 perate climates, and of regions in which the moist and 

 loamy soil, from which it derives its sustenance of small 

 worms, insects, and the like, is not frozen during the pe- 

 riod of its visitations so hard as to preclude its boring 

 with its delicate and sensitive bill for its semi-aquatic 

 prey of worms and larvae. 



