“That is only the half of it; let’s have the whole.”
“Scolopax noveboracensis.”
“Scoly packs never borrow a census; that is a good sized name for a little dowitch, and beats the radish altogether. Go ahead, we’ll learn something before we get through.”
“Why, that is only Latin for New York snipe.”
“Oh, pshaw!” responded Bill, in intense disgust, “I thought it meant a whole bookful of things.”
“The sandpipers, however, come under the family of snipes, and are called tringæ. Among these are enumerated the robin-snipe and the grass-plover, as I told you before, the black-breast, the krieker, or short-neck, and several scarcer varieties. The yelpers and yellow-legs, the tiny teeter, and the willet are tattlers, genus totanus, while the marlin is the godwit limosa. The sickle-bills, jacks, and futes are curlews, genus numenius.”
“And now that you have got through,” grumbled Bill again, “can you whistle a snipe any better or shoot him any easier? Do you know why he stools well in a south-westerly wind, why one stools better than another, or why any of them stool at all? Do you know why he flies after a storm, or why some go in flocks and others don’t, or why there is usually a flight on the fifteenth and twenty-fifth of August? When books tell us these things, I shall think more of the writers.”
“These matters are not easy to find out; even you gunners, who have been on the bay all your lives, where your fathers lived before you, do not know. But now tell us what other sport you have here.”
“On the mainland there are a good many English snipe in spring, while in the fall we catch blue-fish and shoot ducks. The black ducks and teal will soon be along; but ever since the inlet was closed, the canvas-backs and red-heads have been scarce.”
“What do you mean by the inlet’s closing?”