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SC0L0PACIDJ5. 
The chief game-dealer in Belfast told me in the winter of 1848 
that occasionally,, after Christmas, from 90 to 100 couple of snipes 
are brought to him in a morning from the counties of Down and 
Antrim. He purchases them to any extent, and sends them chiefly 
to England, as they produce a higher price there than in Ireland. 
Mr. Yarrell informs me (1848) that Irish snipes rate lower in 
the London market than English, from their being less fat and clean 
in the skin ; — this is scurfy, perhaps (he remarks), owing to the 
low temperature of the ground on which they feed. Many of 
the birds alluded to are doubtless taken in snares, which, little 
though we hear of them about Belfast, I have on different occasions 
detected within a few miles of the town. 
I have myself had some experience in snipe-shooting, and can truly 
say, that of all our birds snipes seem to be the most sensible to the 
skyey influences ; or possibly what appears to us their sensibility 
may be prompted by their instinctive knowledge of that of the 
minute creatures on which they prey ; — the successful pursuit of 
these may require the frequent change of ground. Bogs under 
similar circumstances of weather, at least to our senses, wiU ex- 
hibit their thirty or forty brace of snipes one day, and not more 
than three or four brace the next. The birds would seem to be 
almost ever on the move from one locality to another. At the 
dusk of every evening, too, they leave their more retired daily 
haunt chiefly to feed in localities where they would be disturbed 
during the day. At such times any little moist place invites 
them : — two low, excavated portions within the grounds of the 
Eoyal Academical Institution in the town of Belfast, were at one 
time (and may still be) nightly visited. We generally meet 
with them at the witching hour on flight from the higher to 
the lower grounds ; but when I have been walking on the moun- 
tains in the autumnal evenings they have passed over my head on 
their way from the valley tow'ards the mountain-top. We can hardly 
walk anywhere about the town just named in the autumnal or 
winter days, and sometimes even in those of summer, when be- 
coming dusk, without hearing the call of the snipe on the way to 
its nightly quarters. It is an extremely interesting sight to witness 
