THE WOODCOCK. 165 



diclous enactments, our State Legislators actually adopt and 

 encourage a certain plan to render this species of game, as well 

 as other kinds, nearly extinct throughout our country, in the 

 course of some few years. All we might venture to say upon 

 this subject would avail but little, without the cheerful assist- 

 ance of more wise legislation. AYe therefore pass it by with 

 these few observations to all intelligent and liberal Sportsmen, 

 trusting that no gentleman who follows the sports of the field 

 as a manly and noble pastime will henceforth be so recreant to 

 the cause of humanity, and so blind to the high duties of the 

 craft, as to be seen with a gun in his hand, at all events, in the 

 month of June, in quest of the feeble young Cocks. 



At this early period, no one will deny but "Woodcocks are 

 under the parental care, and most generally are too weak to 

 raise their tender limbs above the tops of the lowest thickets, 

 and not unfrequently even drop dead from mere fright on the 

 discharge of the fowling-piece. 



Such conduct on the part of Sportsmen that ought to know 

 better is shameful and disgraceful in the extreme; and we can- 

 not understand what pleasure they can derive from shooting 

 these miserable little Birds one moment before the time set 

 apart for their destruction, as they are too small and insipid for 

 the table, even in July, and they certainly can't take any pride 

 in doing that which they are forced to do by stealth, as they 

 must do, provided they go after them in the latter part of June, 

 as is too often the case. Every day, nay, every hour of exist- 

 ence, is of the utmost importance to Woodcocks at this period 

 of the year ; the destruction of one old one may involve the 

 loss of a whole brood of young ones, which, if a few days 

 older, would have been able to take care of themselves. We 

 know of several Sportsmen in our city who are in the habit of 

 slipping off a few days before the close of June, to have, as 

 they term it, ^'- the first crack at the Cocks,''^ and we hope that their 

 eyes may meet with these remarks, and that they may relish 

 them in the right spirit and mend their ways accordingly. 



The law does not sanction the shooting of these Birds, in our 

 Northern States, before the fourth of July, and it would have 

 been far better if the framers of those legal enactments had pro- 

 longed the term of prohibition through the months of July and 



