THE SNIPE. 159 



the red man, to those remote and nearly inaccessible 

 morasses of the Arctic Regions whither the foot of man 

 has rarely penetrated, and where the silence of ages is 

 interrupted only by the roll of the ocean surf, the thun- 

 derous crash of some falling iceberg, and the continuous 

 clangor of the myriads and millions of aquatic fowl, 

 which pass the period of reproduction in those lone and 

 gloomy, but to them secure and delightful asylums. 

 Early in the autumn, or, to speak more correctly, in the 

 latter days of summer, the Bay birds begin to return in 

 hordes innumerable, recruited by the young of the sea- 

 son, which, not having as yet indued the full plumage 

 of their respective tribes, are often mistaken by sports- 

 men and gunners, unacquainted with the distinctions of 

 natural history, for new species. During the autumn, 

 they are much more settled and less restless in their 

 habits than during the spring visit, when they are im- 

 pelled northward by the irresistible oestrum, which at 

 that period stimulates all the migratory birds, even those 

 reared in confinement and caged from the nest, to get 

 under way and travel, whither their wondrous instinct 

 orders them, in order to the reproduction of their kind 

 in the localities most genial and secure. 



Throughout the months of August and September, 

 they literally swarm on all our sand-bars, salt meadows, 

 and wild sea-marshes, feeding on the beaches and about 

 the shallow pools left by the retiring tide, on the marine 

 animalculse, worms, aquatic insects, small crabs, minute 



