274: AMERICAN GAME. 



In another respect I cannot precisely agree with the 

 acute and observing naturalist quoted above, as to its 

 ungregarious nature, since on more occasions than one 

 I have seen these birds together in such numbers, and 

 under such circumstances of association, as would cer- 

 tainly justify the application to them of the wordjfeefe 



One of these occasions I remember well, as it occurred 

 while snipe-shootiug on the fine marshes about the 

 rvviere aux Canards in Canada West, when several 

 times I saw as many as five or six flush together from 

 out of the high reeds, as if in coveys ; and this was late 

 in September, so that they could not well have been 

 young broods still under the parental care. 



At another time I s"aw them in yet greater numbers 

 and acting together, as it appeared, in a sort of concert. 

 I was walking, I cannot now recollect why, or to what 

 end, along the marshes on the bank of the Hackensack 

 river, between the railroad bridge and that very singular 

 knoll named Snakehill, which rises abruptly out of the 

 meadows like an island out of the ocean. It was late in 

 the summer evening, the sun had gone quite down, and 

 a thick gray mist covered the broad and gloomy river. 

 On a sudden, I was almost startled by a loud quawk 

 close above my head ; and, on looking up, observed a 

 large Bittern wheeling round and round, now soaring 

 up a hundred feet or more, and then suddenly diving, or 

 to speak more accurately, falling, plump down, with his 

 legs and wings all relaxed and abroad, precisely as if he 



