BAY-SHOOTING. 273 
for the sport, taking a chance at them from Egg Harbor 
skiffs, with heavy guns aud quantum sufficit of No. 4 or 
No. 5 shot, in spite of hot suns and innumerable mosquitoes. 
I said that these birds were improperly called bay- 
snipe, and they are so; for the only bird which is nearly 
connected with the true snipes, is the first or almost the 
first which arrives among us, the red-breasted snipe, Sco- 
lopax Noveboraccusis, better, though barbarously known 
as the “ dowitcher,” the “ quail snipe,” and the “ brown 
back,” according to the various places in which he chances 
to be shot. ven this bird, however, is not a genuine 
snipe, but comes properly under the genus Macrorhampus, 
and has no name of his own in the vernacular. 
The other species, generally included under the com- 
prehensive name of bay-snipe, comprise the curlews, 
three kinds of which visit us in the spring, and return 
again early in the autumn. The great or long-billed cur- 
lew, Numenius longirostris, whose portrait is prefixed ; 
the short-billed, or Hudsonian curlew, Numenius Hudso- 
nicus, nearly resembling the former, but smaller in size, 
and, as his name indicates, shorter 7’ the ned than his con- 
gener; and lastly, the Esquimaux curlew, Numenius 
Borealis, who is commonly known, heaven knows why, as 
the jutes and the doe-bird; and who, feeding often on 
the upland in company with the golden plover, a likeness 
of whom is annexed, is a bird delicate, succulent, and 
well flavored on the table, which may not be said of most 
of the breed, which, to speak truth, are for the most part 
intolerably rank and sedgy; though there be exceptions, 
which shall be named with honor. 
12* 
