from a fortnight to three weeks after the jack have begun to drop into the country. Of course a few 'cock are killed very early in the season. But there is no ground whatever for assuming that these are other than home birds; there is no evidence that the migrant 'cock have begun to arrive till we find them on the coast, and they have never yet appeared on the coast earlier than the first week in October. When 'cock come in as early as the first week in October, it is always during a season in which jack snipe have already spread themselves over the country a fortnight or so before that time. The jack snipe is the pilot of the woodcock in the sense that he reaches us first, but a fortnight after his arrival is quite soon enough to look for the 'cock that follow him.

Jack snipe leave us during the end of March and the beginning of April, by which time they have begun to assume their summer plumage.

While there have been certain supposed instances of the jack snipe having bred in the British Islands, not one of them has ever been satisfactorily proved. Nests have been found and those who found them have averred that their owners were jack snipe; but actual proof has always been lacking, and until such time as a jack is indubitably proved to be connected with a supposed jack's nest our minds must remain

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open on the question as to whether or not the bird ever breeds here. The eggs of the jack snipe cannot be identified as jack snipe's eggs apart from their direct connection with the jack snipe itself. There have been various people who have testified to having seen jack in the months of June and July, but I think I am right in saying that no naturalist of repute has encountered the bird at such a season. A few stragglers-most likely birds which have failed to find mates—sometimes reach us four or five weeks before general migration begins; when a jack is killed early in August there is no ground for assuming that the bird passed the summer here.

The jack snipe breeds throughout Northern Europe, and when the winter comes is to be found in nearly all the countries visited by the full snipe, whose range will be noticed a little further on. Wherever in the United Kingdom there is a district frequented by the full snipe, there also will the jack be found.

The average weight of the jack snipe is a trifle over 2 OZ. The bird measures about 8 in. in length. The bill is about 1 in. By its small size, its short bill, and its dark back, the jack may be distinguished at a glance from the full snipe.

The jack, differing entirely in this respect from the

full snipe, is partly a vegetarian. In open weather though worms, grubs, small snails and so forth constitute his principal fare, he never neglects to consume a certain quantity of vegetable matter ; in hard weather he increases his proportion of vegetable diet to counterbalance the deficiency in the available supply of other food. It is for this reason that at times, when full snipe are starved almost to skeletons, the jack—a fact at which people often wonder-remains as plump and jolly as ever. In the hardest frost one never shoots a jack which shows signs of having suffered from privation. Such is instinct we cannot well doubt that if the instinct of the full snipe prompted it during a lengthy frost to eat what the jack cats, the system of the one bird would assimilate it as well as the system of the other, yet the one bird never conceives the idea of meeting hard times with a makeshift diet. The jack will eat various kinds of seeds as well as grass, moss, and other herbage.

A solitary and independent bird is the jack. He selects some particular haunt and there he remains lonely and self-sufficing. Jack snipe never gather into wisps like full snipe: though a dozen jack may occupy a small piece of marsh, the movements of any one of them are always quite unconnected with the movements of any of the others. The attachment

of both jack and full snipe to certain spots will be dealt with at due length in the shooting section of the book.

While the full snipe moves like lightning when on the wing, the jack snipe's flight is but one degree removed from sluggish. The jack seems to have no fear, and never to be in a hurry. Rising without a sound-the bird is always mute during its sojourn here a jack flits leisurely away and drops again perhaps not a hundred yards from where he was flushed. I have seen a jack, missed with both barrels, fly a distance of a couple of hundred yards or so and then turn and settle again within thirty yards of the gunner. During the daytime—he does his journeyings by night-the jack is always a bird of short flights. Not that his wing power and staying power are anywise lacking, for they carry him huge distances at the times of the spring and autumn migrations. It is simply that the bird is dull and heavy by day and has but little instinctive fear of man, and also pays but little heed to the sound of a gun or the whistling of shot.

The close-lying habit of the jack has gained him among our neighbours across the Channel the name of the deaf snipe,' the origin being, of course, that a bird which allows itself to be approached so nearly

was credited with inability to hear the sound of footsteps. By anyone unfamiliar with its habits, it might well be supposed that the bird was really deaf. So closely does the jack lie that one may literally almost tread upon a bird at times. Jack have often been

caught with a landing net or a butterfly net when at dog has been standing at them. Yarrell mentions a case, which I can quite believe, of a jack having allowed itself to be picked up by hand before the nose of a pointer.

THE FULL SNIPE

The full snipe is met with in every part of the United Kingdom where it can find conditions suited to its tastes. Its haunts are the bog and marsh, the sides of the stream or ditch or pond, the meadow with the springy bottom, the furrow-drained grass land on heavy soils, in fact, any spot where the ground is soft enough to be easily probed by the bird's bill and where there is water, however little, near at hand. I have known snipe in very wet weather congregate on ploughed fields in preference to their usual feeding grounds.

Besides being used for drinking-the snipe is a thirsty soul-water is required by the bird for the