%66 SCOLOPACID.E. 



The chief game-dealer in Belfast told me in the winter of 1848 

 that occasionally, after Christmas, from 90 to 100 couple of snipes 

 are brought to him in a morning from the counties of Down and 

 Antrim. He purchases them to any extent, and sends them chiefly 

 to England, as they produce a higher price there than in Ireland. 

 Mr. Yarrell informs me (1848) that Irish snipes rate lower in 

 the London market than English, from their being less fat and clean 

 in the skin; — this is scurfy, perhaps (he remarks), owing to the 

 low temperature of the ground on which they feed. Many of 

 the birds alluded to are doubtless taken in snares, which, little 

 though we hear of them about Belfast, I have on different occasions 

 detected within a few miles of the town. 



I have myself had some experience in snipe-shooting, and can truly 

 say, that of all our birds snipes seem to be the most sensible to the 

 skyey influences ; or possibly what appears to us their sensibility 

 may be prompted by their instinctive knowledge of that of the 

 minute creatures on which they prey ; — the successful pursuit of 

 these may require the frequent change of ground. Bogs under 

 similar circumstances of weather, at least to our senses, will ex- 

 hibit their thirty or forty brace of snipes one day, and not more 

 than three or four brace the next. The birds would seem to be 

 almost ever on the move from one locality to another. At the 

 dusk of every evening, too, they leave their more retired daily 

 haunt chiefly to feed in localities where they would be disturbed 

 during the day. At such times any little moist place invites 

 them : — two low, excavated portions within the grounds of the 

 Royal Academical Institution in the town of Belfast, were at one 

 time (and may still be) nightly visited. We generally meet 

 with them at the " witching hour " on flight from the higher to 

 the lower grounds ; but when I have been walking on the moun- 

 tains in the autumnal evenings they have passed over my head on 

 their way from the valley towards the mountain-top. We can hardly 

 walk anywhere about the town just named in the autumnal or 

 winter days, and sometimes even in those of summer, when be- 

 coming dusk, without hearing the call of the* snipe on the way to 

 its nightly quarters. It is an extremely interesting sight to witness 



