284 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 



thinks, the strongest argument in favour of this little fish being 

 from a cross of two varieties, or races, which may be the case, 

 and yet the fish be capable of breeding, and gaining this cha- 

 racter of a peculiar variety ; and he supposes different kinds of 

 parrs may be produced by crosses of the sea trout, the hucho, 

 the lake trout, with the river trouts, or perhaps of the salmon, 

 and this would account for their great numbers, and the various 

 tints of the marks on their sides. If the hucho, as he believes, 

 generally spawns late in the winter, it may sometimes meet with 

 trout spawning at the same time. He has seen salmon and 

 trout in the Tweed in a similar state of maturity at the same 

 period ; and, in 1816, he remembers, that he took a large female 

 salmon, that had the period of parturition protracted as late as 

 March. 



( On the Scolopax, page 106.) 



I shall say a few words on the congeners of this bird (the 

 solitary snipe), and on the three varieties so much better known 

 in Europe. The woodcock feeds indiscriminately upon earth- 

 worms, small beetles, and various kinds of larvae, and its 

 stomach contains seeds, which I suspect have been taken up in 

 boring among the excrements of cattle ; yet the stomach of this 

 bird has something of the gizzard character, though not so 

 much as that of the land-rail, which I have found half filled with 

 seeds of grasses, and even containing corn, mixed with may- 

 bugs, earth-worms, grass-hoppers, and caterpillars. The wood- 

 cock, I believe, breeds habitually only in high northern latitudes, 

 yet there are woods in England, particularly one in Sussex, 

 near the borders of Hampshire, in which one or two couple of 

 these birds, it is said, may always be found in summer. I 

 suspect these woodcocks are from the offspring of birds which 

 had paired for their passage, but being detained by an accident 

 happening to one of them, staid and raised a young brood in 

 England, and the young ones probably had their instincts 

 altered by the accidents of their being born in England, and 

 being in a place well supplied with food. It is not improbable, 

 that they likewise raised young ones, and that the habit of 

 staying has become hereditary. There can be no doubt, that 

 woodcocks are very constant to their local attachments ; wood- 

 cocks that have been preserved in a particular wood for a 



