THE JACK SNIPE. 
177 
this is enforced, not by command only, not by the 
threat of punishment and privation, but by the assurance 
of temporal reward, by promise of the greatest bless- 
ings that can be found on earth, length of days and 
prosperity. 
The jack snipe (scolopax gallinula) is with us here, 
as I have always known it, a transitory visitor in the 
winter only — a solitary, unsocial bird — an anchorite 
from choice. With the exception of our birds of prey, 
the manner of whose existing requires it, and a few 
others, all the feathered tribe seem to have a general 
tendency towards association, either in flocks, family 
parties, or pairs; but the individuals of this species 
pass a large portion of their lives retired and alone, 
two of them being rarely, or perhaps never, found in 
company, except in the breeding season. They are 
supposed to pair and raise their young in the deep 
marshy tracts or reedy districts of the fen-counties, 
which afford concealment from every prying eye, and 
safety from all common injuries. Driven by the frosts 
of winter from these watery tracts, their summer’s cov- 
ert, they separate, and seek for food in more favored 
situations, preferring a little, lonely, open spring, trick- 
ling from the side of a hill, tangled with grass and foli- 
age, or some shallow, rushy streamlet in a retired val- 
ley. Having fixed on such a place, they seldojm aban- 
i don it long, or quit it for another ; and though roused 
from it, and fired at repeatedly through the day, neither 
the noise nor any sense of danger seems to alarm them; 
! and, if we should seek for the little judcock on an en- 
suing morning, we find it at its spring again. The in- 
difference with which it endures this daily persecution 
is amazing. It will afford amusement or vexation to 
the young sportsman throughout the whole Christmas 
vacation ; and, from the smallness of its body, will 
ji finally often escape from all its diurnal dangers. The 
rail, and several other birds, confide for safety more in 
their legs than their wings, when disturbed ; but this 
J snipe makes little use of its feet, and takes to its wings 
jj with such reluctance, from an apparent indolence of 
disposition, that, could it be seen in the rushes, or tufts 
