The jack snipe (scolopax gallinula) is with us here, as I have always known it, a transitory visitor in the winter only—a solitary, unsocial bird—an anchorite from choice. With the exception of our birds of prey, the manner of whose existing requires it, and a few others, all the feathered tribe seem to have a general tendency towards association, either in flocks, family parties, or pairs; but the individuals of this species pass a large portion of their lives retired and alone, two of them being rarely, or perhaps never, found in company, except in the breeding season. They are supposed to pair and raise their young in the deep marshy tracts or reedy districts of the fen counties, which afford concealment from every prying eye, and safety from all common injuries. Driven by the frosts of winter from these watery tracts, their summer’s covert, they separate, and seek for food in more favored situations, preferring a little, lonely, open spring, trickling from the side of a hill, tangled with grass and foliage, or some shallow, rushy streamlet in a retired valley. Having fixed on such a place, they seldom abandon it long, or quit it for another; and though roused from it, and fired at repeatedly through the day, neither the noise nor any sense of danger seems to alarm them; and, if we should seek for the little judcock on an ensuing morning, we find it at its spring again. The indifference with which it endures this daily persecution is amazing. It will afford amusement or vexation to the young sportsman throughout the whole Christmas vacation; and, from the smallness of its body, will finally often escape from all its diurnal dangers. The rail, and several other birds, confide for safety more in their legs than their wings, when disturbed; but this snipe makes little use of its feet, and takes to its wings with such reluctance, from an apparent indolence of disposition, that, could it be seen in the rushes, or tufts of herbage, where it hides, it might be captured by the hand. It leaves us early in the spring. Fond of concealment as this little bird usually is, yet there are times when it is infinitely less so than at others; and, I think, upon the relenting of a frost, or when there is a tendency to a thaw, it shows unusual alacrity, springs from its rushy drain almost as readily as the common snipe, and occasions, for the moment, a doubt of the species. The mandible of this species is of a weak and spongy nature.