218 GRALL^E. 



are scattered over a sludgy and watery surface ; and by 

 retiring into the fastnesses of these, they could, during the 

 breeding season, be safe from most predatory animals, and 

 also find food both for themselves and their young, with very 

 little exercise of the wing. 



It must be admitted that, in northern and humid coun- 

 tries, the progress of waste and ruin is almost as unfavourable 

 to snipes and the analogous species of Grallse, as the pro- 

 gress of drainage and improvement. As long as the bog, or 

 accumulation of mosses, dying at bottom and growing at top 

 every year, can retain pools of water, and support rushes and 

 coarse grass, snipes will resort there ; but, in the course of 

 time, longer or shorter according to circumstances, the mosses 

 destroy all else, die themselves, and the surface becomes 

 sterile, naked, and black, impervious to water, and therefore, 

 during every shower, sending down the spores of the moss, 

 which, though latent, are not destroyed, to invade the lower 

 grounds; and as such a surface is wholly at the mercy of the 

 atmosphere, it cools like an iceberg in winter, and heats like 

 a volcano in summer. 



GODWITS, OR OOZE-SUCKERS (Limosci). 



The birds of this genus have some resemblance to the 

 snipes, and also to the tringas, but they diifer from both in 

 so many particulars, that they cannot probably be classed 

 with either. 



Their legs are longer, and perhaps also stouter in propor- 

 tion to their size ; their bodies are more lightly made, and 

 their necks are longer and more lithe. The chief difference, 

 however, is in the bill, which, in birds that in their haunts 

 are such close neighbours, is the most important. Their 

 bills are very long, soft, and flexible for their whole length > 

 rather compressed and triangular at the base, depressed in 

 the rest of the length, and dilated and obtuse at the tip, but 



