AMERICAN SNIPE. 177 



the Great Bear Lake, and in October they return' through 

 Canada (their young broods by that time well grown, 

 and strong enough to accompany them,) en route south- 

 wards to the rice States, where they pass the winter. 



I have occasionally seen a stray snipe during the 

 months of December and January in the neighbourhood 

 of St. Catherine's, on the southern shore of Lake 

 Ontario, and in the low grounds west of Chippewa, 

 and have heard of similar exceptional cases in other 

 parts of the country. These detached birds are com- 

 monly believed to be permanent inhabitants of the dis- 

 tricts in which they are thus met with ; but it is much 

 more Hkely that they have been from some cause or other 

 left behind in the autumn migration, possibly because 

 weak, or hatched very late, and may in that case rejoin 

 the rest in spring on their reappearance in the north. 

 These continually recurring migrations are probably, 

 both with snipe and woodcock, more a matter of neces- 

 sity than of choice, and may be undertaken either in 

 search of food, OAving to the exhaustion of their feeding 

 grounds, or in consequence of the extremes of frost at 

 one season or of drought at another so hardening the 

 mud in which they find their subsistence as to render 

 it impenetrable to their long slender bills. Their fre- 

 quent halts by the way evidently indicate a desire to 

 travel no further than is requisite, and a succession of 



N 



