The shooting was excellent during the whole day, and evening found us collected in the bar-room, well satisfied and particularly jocose over the amusing pugilistic encounter we had witnessed. It lent point to many a good hit at Bill’s expense; even his wife, who is a fine, resolute-looking woman, saying that if she had seen it sooner, she would have taken a broomstick and flogged them both. The general impression was, she could have made her words good.
The pleasure of indulging in fun at the expense of a fellow-creature is very great, and Bill’s adventure was certainly fair game. When our wit was exhausted, and the craving for tobacco mollified by the steady use of our pipes, our thoughts and voices turned to our never-wearying passion, and one of the party commenced:
“I have shot a number of the birds you call kriekers; they are a fat bird, but do not seem to stool. I have never before shot them, except occasionally on the meadows.”
“They don’t stool,” said Bill, “and only utter a krieking kind of cry; but in October they come here very thick, and we walk them up over the meadows. Why, you can shoot a hundred a day.”
“A most excellent bird they are, too—fat and delicate. They are the latest of the bay-snipe in returning from the summer breeding-places; and as they rise and fly from you, they afford extremely pretty shooting. They are sometimes called short-neck, and are, in a gastronomic point of view, the best bay-snipe that is put upon the table.”
“We call the bay-birds usually snipe,” said the first speaker; “but I have been told they are not snipe at all. Refer to Giraud again and give us the truth.”
This fell, of course, to my share, and I commenced as follows:
“I read you yesterday about the plovers, and immediately after them we find an account of the turnstone, strepsilas interpres, which is nothing else than our beautiful brant-bird or horse-foot snipe, as it is called farther south, because it feeds on the spawn of the horse-foot. This pretty but unfortunate bird belongs to no genus whatever, and has been to the ornithologists a source of great tribulation. They have sometimes considered it a sandpiper and sometimes not, so you may probably call it what you please; and as brant-bird is a rhythmical name, it will answer as well as strepsilas interpres; if you have not a fluent tongue, perhaps somewhat better. Of the snipes, or scolopacidæ, the only true representative is the dowitcher, scolopax noveboracensis.
“Hold on,” shouted Bill; “say that last word over again.”
“Noveboracensis.”