162 lewis' AMERICAN SPORTSMAN, 



nostrils, I concluded that smell was what directed it in search 

 of food." 



AVith the foregoing quotation we will dismiss the subject, 

 trusting that some of our friends may yet enlighten us if they 

 should ever catch a AYoodcock engaged in these evolutions. 



THE BILL. 



The bill of the AVoodcock is well supplied with nerves, and 

 is so extremely sensitive to the touch, that few worms can hope 

 to escape its searching explorations, if within two or three 

 inches of the surface of the soft earth into which they delight 

 so much to bore. AVoodcocks are very greedy, or rather we 

 should say voracious Birds, and are both vexatious and difficult 

 to keep in a state of captivity, owing to the trouble consequent 

 upon obtaining a sufficiency of their usual food for them. An 

 English writer observes of this Bird : " A AVoodcock in our 

 menagerie very soon discovered, and drew forth, every worm 

 in the ground, which was dug up to enable him to bore ; and 

 worms put into a large garden-pot, covered with earth five or 

 six inches deep, are always cleared by the next morning, with- 

 out one being left. The enormous quantity of worms that these 

 Birds eat is scarcely credible ; indeed, it would be the constant 

 labor of one person to procure such food for two or three 

 AVoodcocks. The difficulty of procuring a sufficiency of such 

 precarious aliment, determined us to try if bread and milk 

 would not be a good substitute, and we found that by putting 

 clean washed worms into the mess, the Bird soon acquired a 

 taste for this new food, and will now eat a basin of bread and 

 milk in twenty-four hours, besides the worms it can procure." 



AVe quote these remarks in support of our assertion as to 

 the voracity of these Birds, and also for the information of any 

 one who may have a fancy to keep one of them, either as a pet, 

 or for the more laudable purpose of observing its habits. This 

 singular voracity on the part of AVoodcocks is no doubt one of 

 the principal causes of the unsocial and solitary lives that the 

 whole species seem to prefer," as no one spot, however rich in 

 worms or larvae, is capable of producing sufficient food for any 

 length of time for more than one of these greedy cormorants. 



