250 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
grounds only for a few days at intervals, sport or no sport 
is little more than a throw of the dice, or a matter of 
guess-work, so capricious and erratic are the habits of the 
bird. 
The best indications I know of a probability of good 
sport, when the markets show that snipe are in season— 
and they alone do show it beyond the possibility of error— 
are the clearing up of a cold north-east storm into soft 
genial weather, the commencement of’ south-westerly 
breezes, and the subsidence of the waters, if they have 
been out over the lowlands, the frost being, of course, 
entirely out of the ground. 
Such a combination of circumstances exactly at the 
nick of time gives good promise of sport; but if it happen 
too late, it will be of no avail, for the birds will have gone 
onward, or if it fall early, and be immediately succeeded 
and interchanged with wild or frosty weather, the snipe 
will become tricky, and the shooting more than ever casual 
and beyond calculation. 
At times, in the spring, they will lie by day scattered 
singly all over the high, dry uplands, in fallow fields, bare 
pastures, even in wood-sides, descending only at night to 
feed on the marshes, where next morning the sportsman 
will find the droppings and borings of an innumerable 
host, but not a feather. When such is the case, pursuit is 
useless. There is nothing for it but to go home. 
Again, in cold blowy weather, with snow squalls, they 
will lie in bushy covert, among briers and alder brakes, 
where there are springs of water and muddy pools, or 
vlies, as they are called by the Dutch settlers; and on 
