104 MANUAL 



dent in right directions. The members of the family are eas- 

 ily distinguished from members of any of the families which 

 have gone before ; and the Rails, which are often wrongly 

 made a sitft-family of this family, have decided peculiarities of 

 their own at once prominent and stable. Perhaps the most 

 important character of this and allied families is the bill. It 

 is eminently adapted to the means employed by each individ- 

 ual species for the procuring of its food, and the legs and feet 

 as well as the bill vary accordingly. 



The members of this family are, in a very great measure, 

 gregarious and migratory. Nearly every locality, along both 

 the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, has its restricted summer 

 or breeding fauna of these individuals. They are of almost 

 universal distribution : some being found along the sea-coast, 

 some inland, and many in intermediate areas. People unac- 

 quainted with the habits of our birds are often surprised to 

 find sea-coast birds far inland ; but it is a well-known fact 

 that many of our sea-birds, especially the snipes and sandpi- 

 pers and gulls, follow up the course of our larger and even 

 some of our smaller rivers and, at certain times of the year, 

 are abundant along the meadows and river banks hundreds of 

 miles away from the Ocean. The True Snipes (and also the 

 Woodcocks) are found, in fact, more often in the bogs and the 

 ditches inland than directly along the coast. 



The more carefully the student studies the habits of this 

 family, (as of all especially of migratory birds, in fact,) the 

 more thoroughly will he become convinced that its members 

 are influenced in their movements by well-defined laws, rather 

 than chance as many seem to suppose. The laws which com- 

 pel birds to seek food — giving us either extensive or limited 

 migration — are entirely different from those which influence 

 the domestic, seasonable, or daily economy of those same birds 

 when inhabiting peacefully a region where food is abundant, 

 and where they can act out the natural impulses of instinct. 

 It was formerly supposed that, in a very great measure, this 

 peculiarity of this species " happened," that peculiarity of that 



