MIGRATION OF WOODCOCKS. 343 



species. Having said thus much, we think some light may 

 he thrown upon this ohscure subject, hy examining the ahove 

 facts, and comparing them with some others, which are equally 

 well known, about Woodcooks. 



In the first place, their lean, poor, and often scurfy con- 

 dition is not owing to exhaustion from length of flight; 

 because, not only those which are found on the eastern coast 

 are usually very weak and reduced, but even those which are 

 killed in Norway, before the migration has taken place, are 

 found to be already in an emaciated state, and infested with 

 vermin. In a short time, however, after frequenting their 

 favourite haunts in our country, they become fat and plump, 

 and then, as the season advances, they usually fall off, and 

 the flesh of those that have been accidentally met with in 

 the Summer is found to be hard and dry. That their fatigue 

 may be the consequence of this previous debility is therefore 

 not improbable : but it is not the cause. We will next touch 

 upon their h'rst appearance on our western instead of our 

 eastern shores. It is a generally prevailing opinion that the 

 state of the moon has much to do with the arrival and 

 departure of Woodcocks ; but more experienced naturalists 

 have remarked that the wind, and not the moon, determines 

 the time of their arrival, which is usually in misty weather, 

 during the northerly or easterly winds. Supposing then that, 

 about dusk and we know that the migrations of Woodcocks 

 usually, if not invariably, take place at night a flight of them 

 start from Norway, with a sharp northerly or easterly wind 

 helping them, in adding to the natural velocity of their own 

 most rapid flight, which has been estimated at one hundred 

 and fifty miles per hour, high up in the air, as we moreover 

 know they fly, the land below them, when they had crossed 

 the Channel, would be invisible, and, borne upon the breeze, 

 by the time they had continued their flight till early dawn, 

 where would they be ? Look to the map, and we shall find 

 them, after their flight, at the rate of one hundred and twenty 

 or one hundred and fifty miles per hour, far away to the 

 westward of Ireland, hovering over the Atlantic, steering for 

 America; and that they are found at sea, we learn from the 



