THE AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 193 
day, in New Jersey the fifth, and in all the Middle 
States, with the single exception of Delaware, where it 
is deferred until August, some day of the same month is 
fixed as the termination of close time. Even in Dela- 
ware the exception is rendered nugatory, by a provision 
permitting every person to shoot on his own grounds, 
whether in or out of season, in consequence of which 
the birds are all killed off early in June. 
It may now be set down almost as a rule, that in all 
the Atlantic seaboard counties, and, indeed, every where 
in the vicinity of the large cities and great thorough- 
fares, the whole of the summer hatching is killed off 
before the end of July, with the exception of a few 
scattered stragglers, which have escaped pursuit in some 
impenetrable brake or oozy quagmire which defies the 
foot of the sportsman; that few survive to moult, and 
that the diminished numbers, which we now find on our 
autumn shooting-grounds, are supplied exclusively by 
the northern and Canadian broods, which keep success- 
ively flying before the advancing cold of winter, and 
sojourning among us for a longer or a shorter period, ere 
they wing their way to the rice-fields of the Savannah, 
or the cane-brakes of the Mississippi. 
If my method could be generally adopted, of letting 
the fifteenth day of September, after the moulting season 
is passed, and when the birds are beginning again to 
congregate on their favorite feeding-grounds, be the 
commencement of every sort of upland shooting, with- 
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