268 
SCOLOPACIDiE. 
situated,, or whether of fresh or salt water, being equally attractive 
to the snipe, the nature of its food must be various, and not of 
one kind, as Sir Humphrey Davy believed that of the double snipe 
to be."^ A sporting friend once found a fulhgrown horse-leech 
in a snipe shot on the 20th of August ; a second instance of 
which, in mild weather, has also been made known to me. The 
contents of the stomach of seven of these birds, which I particu- 
larly examined, and all from different localities, were as follows : — 
of three shot in the month of January, two contained a few seeds, 
and the third was half-filled with soft vegetable matter : — ^two shot 
in March exhibited the remains of vegetable food which resembled 
Conferva : — of two killed in October, one contained a large worm, 
and two or three seeds of different kinds; the other, two insect larvae 
[Ascaris-hke in form). Fragments of stone, of which some were the 
size of small peas, were found in all, the last-noted one being filled 
with them.f It is a common saying in Ireland, that snipes are 
not good for the table until after the first frost of the season. 
Sir Humplirey Davy remarks : they “ are usually fattest in frosty 
weather, which I believe is owing to tliis, that in such weather 
they haunt only warm springs, where worms are abundant, and 
they do not willingly quit these places, so that they have plenty 
of nourislnnent and rest, both circumstances favourable to fat. 
In wet open weather they are often obliged to make long flights, 
and their food is more distributed^'’ (p. 334, second edition). This 
explanation is not, to my mind, satisfactory. 
Of the snipes^ manner of feeding when actively engaged, it is 
difficult to have ocular demonstration ; but during frost I have 
frequently seen them at the edges of mill-races and oozy streams, 
where they were stationary — -and when backed by snow, even con- 
spicuous — with more than a third of the bill immersed, the 
* ‘ Salmonia/ p. 22 , second edit. 
t The vegetable substances may have remained after worms and other soft animal 
food had been dissolved. 
Sir H. Davy observes : — “ In the stomach of the common snipe I have generally 
found earth-worms, and often seeds and rice [the allusion is to the continent] and 
gravel,” p. 123. He again mentions its feeding upon “almost every kind of worm 
or larva,” p. 333. 
