298 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



asserted. Shooting during my early years in India, it was 

 my custom to take note of this alleged habit of the bird, till 

 I became satisfied of its uncertainty, and the flight up-wind 

 came to be regarded as mythical, or at least inapplicable to 

 the Bengal snipe, which, according to my observations, aims 

 rather at getting quickly out of range than taking the wind 

 direction to guide its flight. 



Although birds may often rise in wisps, two or more 

 rarely fall together to a single barrel ; to the best of my 

 recollection I have seen three thus fall together only twice 

 or thrice. Double shots are, of course, cominon, and often 

 the rule when birds lie well and are plentiful ; and it is no 

 unusual thing for a good and steady shot to have six or eight 

 birds down on the ground before and around him at the same 

 time, all shot while he moved forward a pace or two. A 

 snipe may now and then be captured by hand if asleep in the 

 noontide heat or greatly frightened by much firing ; but ordi- 

 narily that bird, next to the curlew, the ruddy sheldrake, and 

 the wild goose, is the most difficult to surprise. 



The remark is common that snipe are extremely capri- 

 cious, being found one day in great numbers on the ground 

 from which they are altogether absent on another ; or that 

 they rise in wisps on one side of a path or ridge, and only 

 singly at long intervals on the other, though the soil is appa- 

 rently precisely similar on both sides. This seeming caprice 

 is accounted for by the knowledge the birds possess of the 

 quality of the feeding and resting grounds, according to the 

 weather, time of day, comparative hardness or softness of the 

 earth, the nature of food to be obtained, and other good and 

 sufficient reasons. Sometimes a score or two of snipe may be 

 observed to desert their ordinary resorts and to pack together 

 on a bit of low grass or piece of bare ploughed land, looking 

 from a distance like a flock of plover. When shooting round 

 large " jheels," it will be remarked that these birds prefer as 

 their resting-places during the greatest heat of the day the 

 reeds, rushes, and water-lilies in the centre, out of which they 

 rise very sluggishly on the near approach of the canoe, in which 



