

THE WOODCOCK. 213 



express when the drying power of the atmosphere begins to 

 relent, are direct proofs of the principle here contended for : 

 and there is another corroboration ; woodcocks and snipes 

 generally perform their migrations when the air is humid, 

 often when there is fog upon the ground. If dry frost sud- 

 denly overtakes them, they perish ; and by analogy, which in 

 this case is not a vague assumption, they seek humid and 

 shady places for their nests, impelled thereto by the action of 

 the drought upon their delicately sensitive bills, which thus 

 serve the double purpose of finding their food by boring into 

 the soft mud, and guiding them instinctively to the places in 

 which that food is to be found. 



Thus, though to the sportsman and the epicure, woodcocks 

 are very interesting birds, they have a much higher, and, if 

 properly followed out, a much more practically extensive im- 

 portance, as part of the grand system of nature, in which all 

 the productions of creation, and all their phenomena, work 

 together, so that no individual exists, and no event happens, 

 singly and of itself. 



This very curious subject would admit of much latitude of 

 inquiry, and lead to many very striking results ; but we have 

 no space for entering upon it, as it is one of which a partial 

 view would mislead ; as little is it necessary to give any par- 

 ticular description of the woodcock, a bird which, when in 

 the country, can in general be seen only by the sportsman, to 

 whom to offer any instruction, would be treason against the 

 canons of Nimrod.* 



* Both snipes and woodcocks breed more abundantly in our island 

 than has been supposed. The woodcock generally deposits four eggs on 

 a dry bank, and the young, as soon as hatched, are conveyed to wet, 

 swampy grounds. We have ourselves disturbed this bird while incu- 

 bating, within the precincts of a small wood near the banks of the Bollen, 

 in Cheshire. The neighbourhood of Woolmer Forest is among their 

 breeding -haunts, and many other places might be cited. The old birds 

 remove the young by taking them up one at a time in their feet, and 



