256 
The Animal-Lore of Shahspeare 1 s Time. 
The water-woosell next, all over black as jet, 
With various colours, black, green, blue, red, russet, white, 
Do yield the gazing eyes as variable delight, 
As do those sundry fowls, whose several plumes they be.” 
(PolyoTbion , song xxv.) 
Leigh (p. 149 ) tells us that “ the water-hen is common 
in ponds and meers, but not much regarded, because 
esteemed unpleasant food.” The last bird on Drayton’s 
list must not be mistaken for the dipper, or water-ouzel. 
This is a small bird allied to the thrush, that frequents 
the banks of streams, but is not found in marshy districts. 
By the water-woosell, or black bird, the little moor-hen 
may be meant. 
Of waders, Drayton writes :— 
“ And under them again (that water never take, 
But by some ditches side, or little shallow lake 
Lie dabbling night and day) the pallat-pleasing snite. 
The bidcock, and like them the redshank, that delight 
Together still to be, in some small reedy bed, 
In which these little fowls in summer’s time were bred.” 
Thomas Muffett {Healths Improvement T 
Smpe. ^ 96) mentions the Snipe, or Snite— 
“ a kind of wood-snite in Devonshire, greater then the commen snite r 
which never comes into shallows nor springs of water: and in Holland 
I remember snites never living out of springs, as great almost as our 
woodcocks, called heeren-schneffs, because they are in comparison the- 
lords or chief of snites, or that they are onely fit for lords tables.” 
The habits of the Woodcock are somewhat eccentric. 
These birds may be found in great plenty 
Woodcock. ' -i , i ^ , -U 
one day and the next not one can be seen. 
This peculiarity is noticed in an article in the Harleian 
Miscellany {vol. ii. p. 583):— 
“ In woodcocks especially it is remarkable that upon a change of the 
wind to the east, about Alhallows-tide, they will seem to have come 
