THE AMERICAN SNIPE. 91 
in such seasons, more or less, he woos his mate, nidifi- 
cates and rears his young among us, from the Raritan 
and the Passaic northward and eastward to the Great 
Lakes, and throughout Michigan, Wisconsin, probably, 
and Canada West, up far into the Arctic Circles. 
Still, those which breed with us in the United States, 
and even in the Canadas, are but as drops of water to an 
ocean, to those which rush on the untiring pinions moved 
by amatory instinct to the far breeding grounds of Lab- 
rador, Symsonia, and Boothia Felix, whither it is sep- 
posed they resort to rear their young in hyperborean soli- 
tude, thence to reissue, in the summer and the earlier 
autumn, and re-populate our midland meadows. 
In the neighborhood of Amherstberg, Canada West, 
they appear very early; often in February of mild sea- 
sons, alwaysin March ; and there may breed, and remain 
until banished by severe cold. I shot one there myself 
last autumn, the last bird of the season, very late in No- 
vember, I believe on the 28th or 29th; and with the 
plover, the Hudsonian godwit, and the Esquimaux 
curlew, they were seen there this spring in the first days 
of March. 
Around Quebec, I have shot English snipe on the up- 
lands, in fallow fields and rushy pastures—for the grass 
in the morasses does not begin to shoot in those far north- 
ern latitudes, so as to afford them shelter, until much 
later in the year—in the end of April and the beginning 
of May; but they arrive there only by small scattered 
