190 AMERICAN GAME. 
and valuable species of game, as the mildness of the 
winters in ordinary seasons would permit the bird to 
remain perennially in the island, without resorting to 
migration in order to obtain food. 
The woodcock and snipe can both be very readily 
domesticated, and can easily be induced to feed on bread 
and milk reduced to the consistency of pulp, of which 
they ultimately become extremely fond. This is done at 
first by throwing a few small red worms into the bread 
and milk, for which the birds bore and bill, as if it 
were in their natural muddy soil. 
In all countries in which any species of the woodcock 
is found, it is a bird essentially of moderate climates, 
abhorring and shunning all extremes of temperature, 
whether of heat or of cold. 
With us, it winters in the Southern States from Vir- 
ginia, in parts of which, I believe, it is found at all sea- 
sons of the year, through the Carolinas, Georgia and 
Florida to Louisiana and Mississippi, in the almost 
impenetrable cane-brakes and deep morasses of which it 
finds a secure retreat and abundance of its favorite food, 
during the inclement season, which binds Up every 
stream and boggy swamp of the Middle and New 
England States in icy fetters. 
So soon, however, as the first indications of spring 
commence, in those regions of almost tropical heat, the 
woodcock wings its way with the unerring certainty of 
instinct.evhich guides him back, as surely as the magnet 
