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OF THE WOODCOCK.

(Transmitted to the Editor by a

Correspondent.)

OF this bird there are two sorts, commonly called the small brown and the muffed, which were formerly mistaken for male and female. In shape and appearance they differ no less than in size. The latter has a large puffed head, (whence it takes its name) is long and deep in the breast, and remark able for an assemblage of finely contrasted tints on its back and wings. The latter, now but rarely met with, has a smooth fine head, short beak, round body, and, cannot boast of such exquisite plumage. It is, however, when dressed, of equal flavour, and as these birds are in all other respects perfectly similar, we may venture to treat of them as one and the same.

The woodcock has been the subject of much conjecture.. Where is it bred, and whence does it visit our islands? are questions which, after the strictest scrutinies of the sportsman, and the most minute researches of the naturalist, have been solved only in part. Of the various reports concerning it, one says that it breeds in the inaccessible bogs of Poland; another makes it indefinitely a native of Russia; a third directs us to the morasses in the interior of America, and adds, that in their passage to this country, about the time of harvest, it is a common practice to way lay and take numbers of them on the Islands of the Delawar; and whilst nothing has been adduced in actual proof of either of these positious, we cannot but smile at the surmise of the countryman, which formerly attracted some at tention, that woodcocks dropped VOL. XLVI.-No. 271,

down from the moon. However, they visit us, and wherever they come from, it appears that they reach our coasts invariably from a western direction.

The Province of Munster, in Ireland, has them before us; Cornwall and Devon before any other counties in England; and Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire, before any other part of Wales. That a few have, from very remote periods, been bred in the Azores or Western Islands, has been ascertained as a fact. These, however, can in number by no means equal what annually resort to our country only, and if we may be allowed to add one to the numerous conjectures already made on a subject so interesting to the sportsman, we have sufficient grounds for supposing that they are not originally natives even of the Western Islands, but that of those returning from this country, the disabled from wounds, indisposition, or any other source of debility, annually stop short at these islands, and finding a sufficiency of food, and feeling an insufficiency of strength, to resume their flight, they remain here, and the healthier part of them propagate their breed.

Allowing these premises to be correct, we may infer that the said islands serve as a direction only to the place of their destination, and that according to the conjecture before alluded to, they are natives of the interior, possibly remote parts, of the Continent of America. According to the best information, one only has ever been heard of in that country north of the Delawar, and that was shot by a clergyman in Newfoundland in the year 1802. On examining the make of this bird, we find it sin

B

gularly

gularly qualified for long and rapid flight, and when we notice the strength of pinion, and the immense spread of the wings, we must not omit their arched formation. This alone constitutes a singularity, and with the exception of the beron, is peculiar to tropical birds, which remain on the wing a great length of time together, and is calculated to increase their buoyancy.

noise, twists and turns in the air with incredible velocity, and seems to redouble its efforts towards evasion. Its flight is now distant and rapid, and when the eye has followed it through a variety of windings, and is confident of having marked it down, a sudden turn or wheel, possibly in the very act of pitching, often raises it again, and places it beyond the calculation of the most experienced sportsman.

Of all its peculiarities, however, one must not be omitted, and which will possibly ever remain inexplicable; and that is, that in all countries frequented by the woodcock, there are certain places, apparently most likely for them, where they will not resort; and that in the identical spots and si

Some woodcocks reach Ireland as early as the middle of September. The first few in England are generally found in the highest lands of Cornwall, and on the loftiest peaks and most craggy situations in the forest of Dartmoor, in the county of Devon. Of those taken in either place, in addition to dishevelled plumage, they have exhibited lean-tuations where they were found by ness, and other marks of recent arrival. They do not reach us in any numbers till the end of October, when, after having trimmed their plumage, explored the country, regained their flesh, and become gradually naturalised, they give proof of habits and propensities, differing from all others of the feathered tribe. Influenced much by wind and weather, they at times appear equally variable. Some will remain a month or more in a situation, where they are unmolested, and have plenty of food, provided the wind continues in the same quarter. Any change in the atmosphere, however trifling, seems to affect them. If they come to you in frosty weather, open weather takes them away, and vice versa. Thus it is by no means uncommon to find many woodcocks one day, and not one the next.

In foggy weather, this bird flies heavily and drops soon. In dry frosty days, however, and with an easterly wind, it rises at the least

our forefathers, there chiefly, if any be in the country, are they found at the present day. That they always feed in low and moist lands, and such as admit of what is called boring, appears a mistake. Numbers are annually taken by the springe on the highest hills in Cornwall and Devon, when in pur suit of their favourite food, the long lob-worm. In general, it seems these birds chiefly frequent woods and woody situations. In Devon shire, however, throughout the season, they are found also in wet ditches; under the Quantock hills in Somerset, they lay in ferns'; in the Scilly Islands, in low broom; and in the Isle of Lundy, in heath and rushes.

From the comparative scarcity of these birds in England for the last thirty years, the usual mode of taking them by net in the woods at what is called roading time, has, in great measure, ceased, and an observation has been often made, that the breed is somehow or other

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considerably reduced; this, however, appears to be erroneous, from the quantities which annually resort to France and Spain. At the foot, and on either side of the Pyrennees, our officers under Lord Wellington noticed great numbers of them. We may conclude, therefore, that woodcocks are as plenty as ever, though not in England; and that they, in pursuance with the practice of all the migrating tribes, whether of the earth, air, or water, in process of time vary their rout; and of these birds, alike the object of the sportsman and the epicure, we have now only the gleanings, whereas our more southern neighbours are in the enjoyment of the full and redundant harvest. April 5, 1815.

P.

THE SADDLE PUT UPON THE RIGHT HORSE.

hasty, but very true sketch, of a day's sport which I had at Clay Hythe, in the river Cam; and the sensations described in it, were those that I really felt in my walk to and from that place.

T. G. can be no sportsman, and I should be fearful if my fish-bag should fall in the way of such man; he would as readily appropriate some of the contents to himself, as he has appropriated my little essay; he has not even had the wit to alter the title, for by that I discovered it, in looking over your table of contents for the last number.

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I have headed this "the saddle put upon the right horse," and I feel some sort of pleasure in putting myself on a level with that noble animal, feeling that however trifling and inelegant my saddle, as I have termed it, may be, it is too much to let an ass wear it. The two principal quotations in the

To the Editor of the Sporting Ma- article as T. G. has sent it to you,

SIR,

gazine.

IT is somewhat singular, that just at the time I was sending you an anecdote (The Judges and the Parish Clerk), which I feared might have been in print before, and therefore prefaced it in such a way as to escape any thing like censure even if it had; a person signing himself "T. G. Laleham," has imposed upon you, as original, "The Angler's Day." If you, or your readers, will take the trouble to refer to the Lady's Magazine for October, 1813, that piece will be found, almost verbatim, as T. G. has now sent it to you; and in the few alterations he has made, the sense is rather impaired than amended. The piece was written by me, at Cambridge, in the month of September, 1818, and was

a

were not in mine; I shall finish this note by re-quoting the last line of one of them, which T. G. has laid much emphasis on, and which I recommend to his serious notice. It is,

"Blush, and be silent.”

I am, Sir, your

dent,

Clement's Inn.

H

old corresponJ. M. LACEY.

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in May, 1814, to the Rev. Dr. Astley, son of the late Sir Edward Astley, who bred her; at that time she was in very fine condition; but on the 27th of June following, an extremely hot day, as one of the Doctor's men was trotting her across a common, she suddenly

and thirty seconds, and whilst in Mr. Boswell's possession, she won four extraordinary matches in one day.

A portrait of her was given in our 116th Number.

ED TO THE HIGH AND THE LOW.

dropt, and immediately expired. HAPPINESS EQUALLY DISPENS Although to many of our readers the exploits of Phenomena are perfectly well known, it may not be improper, while recording her death, to notice a few of the most remarkable.

Independent of several feats, in which she had been successful, she was matched in June, 1800, (then twelve years old) by Mr. Robson, to trot seventeen miles within one hour on the Huntingdon road, and which she performed with ease in fifty-six minutes. The performance was doubted by some, and very large bets were offered that she did not perform the same distance in the same time, viz. fiftyşix minutes.

Mr. Robson accepted the challenge, and in July following, within one month, she trotted again the seventeen miles a few seconds under fifty-three minutes, which is unparalleled in sporting history. She was afterwards matched for two thousand guineas to trot nineteen miles and a half within the hour, but to which her opponents paid forfeit. Observe, this was in consequence of its being proved by several stop watches, that during this last match she did four miles under eleven minutes, which alarmed the sporting gentlemen, who were of opinion she could trot twenty miles in the hour.

From the CHAMPION Sunday Newspaper.

THE fastidious habits of polished

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life generally incline us to reject, as incapable of interesting us, whatever does not present itself in a graceful shape of its own, and a ready-made suit of ornaments: but some of the plainest weeds become beautiful under the microscope ;it is the benevolent provision of nature, that in proportion as you feel the necessity of extracting interest from common things, you are enabled to do so;-and the very least that this familiarity with homeliness will do for us, is to render our artificial delicacy less liable to annoyance, and to teach us how to grasp the nettles till they obey us.

I am enough of a Wordsworthian not to confine my tastes to the received elegancies of society: and in one respect 1 go farther than he, for though as fond perhaps of the country as Mr. Wordsworth, I can manage to please myself in the, very thick of cities, and even find there as much reason to do justice to Providence in this way, as he does in the haunts of sportsmen, and anglers, and alldevouring insects.

When this beautiful and valuable To think, for instance, of that creature was twenty-three old, laborious and inelegant class of the (February 11, 1811), she trotted community,-washerwomen;-and pine miles in twenty-eight minutes of all the bot, disagreeable, dab

bing, smoaking, splashing, kitcheny, cold-dining, anti-companyreceiving associations, to which they give rise what can be more annoying to any tasteful lady or gentleman at their first waking in the morning, than when that dreadful thump at the door comes, announcing the tub-tumbling viragoes with their brawny arms and brawling voices? I must confess, for my own part, that my taste, in the abstract, is not for washerwomen; I prefer Dryads and Naiads, and the figures that resemble them,—

Fair forms, that glance amidst the green of woods,

Or from the waters give their sidelong shapes

Half swelling.

Yet I have lain awake sometimes in a street in town, after this first confounded rap, and pleased my self with reflecting how equally the pains and enjoyments of this world are dealt out to people in general, and what a pleasure there is in the mere contemplation of any set of one's fellow-creatures and their humours, when our knowledge has acquired humility enough to look steadily at them.

You know the knock which I mean; it comes like a lump of lead, and instantly wakes the maid whose business it is to get up, though she pretends not to hear it. Another knock is inevitable, and it comes; and then another; but still Betty does not stir, or stirs only to put herself in a still snugger posture, knowing very well that they must knock again. "Now drat that Betty," says one of the washerwomen, "she hears as well as we do, but the deuce a bit will she move till we give her another;" and at the word another, down the knocker goes again.

"It's

very odd," says the master of the house, mumbling from under the bed-clothes, "that Betty does not get up to let the people in; I've heard that knocker three times.""Ob," returns the mistress, "she's as lazy as she's high ;" and off goes the chamber-bell;-by which time Molly, who begins to lose her sympathy with her fellow servant in impatience of what is going on, gives her one or two conclusive digs in the side, when the other gets up, rubbing her eyes and mumbling, and hastening, and shrugging herself down stairs, Watson, I hope you haven't been opens the door with "Lord, Mrs. standing here long!"-" Standing here long, Mrs. Betty! oh don't tell me; people might stand starving their legs off, before you'd put a finger out of bed.”—“ Oh don't say so, Mrs. Watson; I'm sure I always rises at the first knock; and there—you'll find every thing comfortable below, with a nice hock of ham which I made John leave for you." At this the washerwomen cease their mumbling, and shuffle down stairs, hoping to see Mrs. Betty early at breakfast. Here, after warming themselves at the copper, taking a mutual pinch of snuff, and getting things ready for the wash, they take a snack at the promised hock; for people of this profession have always their appetite at hand, and every interval of labour is invariably cheered by the prospect of having something at the end of it.

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Well," says Mrs. Watson, finishing the last cut,-" some people thinks themselves mighty generous for leaving one what little they can't eat; but howsomever it's better than nothing." "Ah," says Mrs. Jones, who is a miuor genius,

one must take what one can get

now

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