WOODCOCK-SHOOTING. 293 
especially I think of chestnuts, contiguous to wet bottoms 
and swampy feeding ground. Thick maple swamps in flat 
lands adjacent to wide meadows, and large, slow-flowing 
streams are always favorable; and I have found them in 
impracticable white cedar swamps, among underwood of 
rhododendrons and calmias, which the multitude call 
sheep-laurels. 
Hot, dry weather, is the most favorable for July shoot- 
ing, as it forces the birds to congregate in numbers in all 
the wet, shady places, so that they are easily and surely 
found. : 
Wet weather is the worst, as they can live and feed 
every where, in highlands, in lowlands, in ploughed fields 
or pastures, in any and every, likely or unlikely, place 
equally well; so that they can only be found few in number 
and dispersed over large tracts of land, making the search 
for them an absolute toil, in lieu of a pleasure. In hot, 
dry weather, when they abound, they will often run out, 
especially in the middle of the day and toward afternoon, 
late in the season, into moist low-lying cornfields by the 
woodsides, in which, when found, they are the most 
difficult. shooting in the world, as they always fly down 
the rows without topping the corn. 
Many persons believe that when the woodcock dis- 
appear, as they always do in August at the moulting 
season, not reappearing in numbers until the cold season 
commences in October, they merely retreat to the corn- 
fields. I am satisfied that this is notso; a few may linger 
in such places, but of the great mass there is unquestion- 
ably a short summer migration; and, although I have 
