144 
FRANK FORESTER^ FIELD SPORTS. 
southerly wind abroad to dry the herbage and to give the dogs a 
chance of scenting their game. 
As the stranger cannot thus choose, it is ulost important that 
he should know how to make the best of bad circumstances ; for 
even in the worst weather, if there be birds at all upon his range, 
knowing his ground and the habits of his bird, he will be able, 
nine times out of ten, to make a fair day’s work. 
I once shot three successive days over the Long Meadow, 
Lewises, the Troy and Parsippany Meadows, from Pine Brook, 
with a friend, in the very worst weather I ever saw for Snipe¬ 
shooting—dry, keen, cutting north-easters, with the dust flying 
one half hour, and the sun shining clear but cold, and hailstones 
pelting down the next. The birds were, of course, as wild as 
can be imagined ; drumming high up in the air, and performing 
all kinds of unusual antics ; yet, by dint of good dogs, desperate 
fagging, and a perfect knowledge of our ground, we picked up 
sixty-two couple of Snipe, besides a few Duck, in the course 
of three days. 
No great work, it is true, nor much to boast of; but, mark me 
now —during those same three days, two. other gentlemen, as good 
shots as ourselves, perhaps better, beat the same meadows, put¬ 
ting up at the rival tavern, and hunting so exactly the same line 
of country with ourselves, that we met and conversed with them 
more than once each day. These gentlemen bagged, in all, 
eleven Snipe and a Sandpiper; and that for the simplest reason 
imaginable—they did not know where to look for Snipe in wild 
weather, while we did. 
It is, of course, unnecessary to tell any person acquainted with 
the first elements of Shooting, that the Snipe feeds, not on suc¬ 
tion, but on small worms and other insects, which he collects by 
boring in moist earth with his long sensitive bill. His favorite 
feeding-grounds are, therefore, soft, sloppy tracts, where the soil 
is rich vegetable loam, or bog-earth, interspersed with springs, 
and sparsely covered with low, succulent grasses ;—earth, from 
the surface of which the waters have recently subsided, and on 
which a muddy, rust-colored scum has been deposited, on their 
