162 
MIGRATION OF WOODCOCKS. 
prevailing opinion, that the state of the moon has 
much to do with the arrival and departure of Wood- 
cocks ; but more experienced naturalists have re- 
marked, that the wind, and not the moon, deter- 
mines the time of their arrival, which is usually in 
misty weather, during northerly or easterly winds. 
Supposing, then, that about dusk, and we know that 
the migrations of W oodcocks usually, if not inva- 
riably, take place at night, a flight of them starts 
from Norway, with a sharp northerly or easterly 
wind helping them, in adding to the natural velocity 
of their own most rapid flight, which has been esti- 
mated at one hundred and fifty miles per hour, — high 
up in the air, as we moreover know, they fly, — the 
land below them, when they had crossed the Channel, 
would be invisible, and, borne upon the breeze, by the 
time they had continued their flight till early dawn, 
where would they be? Look to the map, and wfc- 
shall find them, after their flight, at the rate of one 
hundred and twenty, or one hundred and fifty, miles 
per hour, far away to the westward of Ireland, hover- 
ing over the Atlantic, steering for America ; and that 
they are found at sea, we learn from the most respect- 
able authority. A Cornish gentleman, sailing at a dis- 
tance from land unusual for birds to be seen, discerned 
a bird high in the air, which, gradually descending, 
alighted on the deck, and proved to be a Woodcock. 
During a heavy gale, two others sought shelter on 
board a line-of-battle ship, cruizing in the Channel ; 
and a naval officer informed us, that, after a stormy 
night, several leagues to the westward of the Land’s- 
End, when shaking the reefs out of the topsails, early 
in the morning, several Woodcocks were discovered in 
