THE SNIPE. 159 
the red man, to those remote and nearly inaccessible 
morasses of the Arctic Regions whither the foot of man 
has rarely penetrated, and where the silence of ages is 
interrupted only by the roll ‘of the ocean surf, the thun- 
derous crash of some falling iceberg, and the continuous 
clangor of the myriads and millions of aquatic fowl, . 
which pass the period of reproduction in those lone and 
gloomy, but to them secure and delightful asylunis. 
Early in the autumn, or, to speak more correctly, in the 
latter days of summer, the Bay birds begin to return in 
hordes innumerable, recruited by the young -of the sea- 
son, which, not having as yet indued the full plumage 
of their respective tribes, are often mistaken by sports- 
men and gunners, unacquainted with the distinctions of 
natural history, for new species. During the autumn, 
they are much more settled and less restless in their 
habits than during the spring visit, when they are im- 
pelled northward by the irresistible estrwm, which at 
that period stimulates all the migratory birds, even those 
reared in confinement and caged from the nest, to get 
under way and travel, whither their wondrous instinct 
orders them, in order to the reproduction of their kind 
in the localities most genial and secure. 
Throughout the months of August and September, 
they literally swarm on all our sand-bars, salt meadows, 
and wild sea-marshes, feeding on the beaches and about 
the shallow pools left by the retiring tide, on the marine 
animalcule, worms, aquatic insects, small crabs, minute 
