The Zoologist— February, 1871. 04^1 



we walked on too quickly, they rose behind us; if the dog fetched one he 

 sprang several more, so reluctant did they seem to take wing at all, and 

 their numbers were so extraordinary and so unlocked for that the eye 

 became altogether confused, and it was difficult to determine which to shoot 

 at first. In the excitement of this novel scene I well remember missincr 

 five shots m succession with my first barrel, and killing them all with the 

 second; and though in a very short time we had secured twelve or fourteen 

 couples, had I been as good a snipe shot as my companion, and daylight 

 had lasted, we might easily have bagged eighteen or twenty couples."— 

 P. 320. '■ 



One additional note on the snipe is not only truthful but inte- 

 resting: I allude 10 its predilection for some particular spot: this 

 IS not new to sportsmen, but I do not recollect previously readinc^ 

 of it. f J o 



" The partiality for some particular spot is as marked in the snipe as in 

 the woodcock, and most snipe-shooters can recall some pit-hole, drain or 

 spring-head, where invariably as the season came round a snipe (and more 

 particularly a jack) could be found. If the soil is but suitable to their habits, 

 any moist situation contents them, and I remember some years back a little 

 swamp close to a residence at Hardiugham, where snipes were always to be 

 found in autumn. So confined was the space that at the first shot the 

 ' whole ' snipes would rise in a wisp, and two or three jacks would be 

 flushed by close walking. If revisited again in an hour or two, they were 

 sure to have returned to the same spot, and thus in two or three ^^'sits as 

 many couples might be bagged in the day; but drainage has, I beUeve. 

 since accomplished what constant shooting failed to effect, and banished them 

 for ever."— P. 328. 



With regard to the jack snipes breeding in this country, Mr. 

 Stevenson seems as sceptical as myself; he discredits the state- 

 ment in Paget's 'Natural History of Yarmouth' and Yarrell's paper 

 on our British snipes in Loudon's 'Magazine of Natural History,' 

 and does not even mention the anonymous records in the ' Field,' 

 one of which, if I recollect, assigned eleven as the number of eggs 

 to be found in a nest. On the subject of another snipe, Sabine's, 

 he is very diffuse, having carefully collected and collated a number 

 of records, entering also into the question of its distinctness as a 

 species: this subject is one of great interest, and well worth all the 

 trouble expended on it. In the 'Field,' a fortnight ago, is a sum- 

 mary of the published occurrences of this curious bird — a summary 

 which I propose transferring to the 'Zoologist' when lean find 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VI. H 



