Q74 AMERICAN GAME. ~ 
In another respect I cannot precisely agree with the 
acute and observing naturalist quoted above, as to its 
ungregarious nature, since on more occasions than one 
I have seen these birds together in such numbers, and 
under such circumstances of association, as would cer- 
tainly justify the application to them of the word flock. 
One of these occasions I remember well, as it occurred 
while snipe-shooting on the fine marshes about the 
rwiere aue Canards in Canada West, when several 
times I saw as many as five or six flush together from 
out of the high reeds, as ifin coveys; and this was late 
in September, so that they could not well have been 
young broods still under the parental care. 
At another time I saw them in yet greater numbers 
and acting together, as it appeared, in a sort of concert. 
I was walking, I cannot now recollect why, or to what 
end, along the marshes on the bank of the Hackensack 
river, between the railroad bridge and that very singular 
knoll named Snakehill, which rises abruptly out of the 
meadows like an island out of the ocean. It was late in 
the summer evening, the sun had gone quite down, and 
a thick gray mist covered the broad and gloomy river. 
On a sudden, I was almost startled by a loud guawk 
close above my head; and, on looking up, observed a 
large Bittern wheeling round and round, now soaring 
up a hundred feet or more, and then suddenly diving, or 
to speak more accurately, falling, plump down, with his 
legs and wings all relaxed and abroad, precisely as if he 
