SNIPES
—are well known to the sporting world in winter shooting, and are of two sorts; one nearly as large again as the other, though precisely the same in shape, make, feather, and formation. They frequent the same places, subsist on the same food, and are frequently found near to each other. The larger is called a whole snipe; the smaller, a Jack; the latter of which is not very easily killed, at least by an indifferent shot; of which some proof was recently given by a gentleman of Easthampstead, in Windsor Forest, who very warmly entertained his friend with a description of "a Jack snipe he had found upon the heath, which had afforded him sport for six weeks; and he did not at all doubt but he would serve him for sport during the season, if he was not taken off by a frost; and what was still more convenient, he always knew where to find him within a hundred yards of the same place." They are birds of passage, supposed to breed principally in the lower lands of Switzerland and Germany, though some (particularly the Jacks) remain and breed in the fens and marshy swamps of this country, where their nests with eggs and young are frequently found. They arrive here sooner or later in the Autumn, regulated in respect to time by the wind and weather, but never appear till after the first rains; and leave this country in the spring, so soon as the warmer sun begins to absorb or exhale the moisture from the earth, and denote the approach of Summer.—See Shooting.