WOODCOCK-SHOOTING. 293 



especially I think of chestnuts, contiguous to wet bottoms 

 and swampy feeding ground. Thick maple swamps in flat 

 lands adjacent to wide meadows, and large, slow-flowing 

 streams are always favorable ; and I have found them in 

 impracticable white cedar swamps, among underwood of 

 rhododendrons and calmias, which the multitude call 

 sheep-laurels. 



Hot, dry weather, is the most favorable for July shoot- 

 ing, as it forces the birds to congregate in numbers in all 

 the wet, shady places, so that they are easily and surely 

 found. 



Wet weather is the worst, as they can live and feed 

 every where, in highlands, in lowlands, in ploughed fields 

 or pastures, in any and every, likely or unlikely, place 

 equally well ; so that they can only be found few in number 

 and dispersed over large tracts of land, making the search 

 for them an absolute toil, in lieu of a pleasure. In hot, 

 dry weather, when they abound, they will often run out, 

 especially in the middle of the day and toward afternoon, 

 late in the season, into moist low-lying cornfields by the 

 woodsides, in which, when found, they are the most 

 difficult shooting in the world, as they always fly down 

 the rows without topping the corn. 



Many persons believe that when the woodcock dis- 

 appear, as they always do in August at the moulting 

 season, not reappearing in numbers until the cold season 

 commences in October, they merely retreat to the corn- 

 fields. I am satisfied that this is not so ; a few may linger 

 in such places, but of the great mass there is unquestion- 

 ably a short summer migration; and, although I have 



