About the 15th of July the returning hordes, young birds and old together, full grown and in fine condition, begin to reappear in the marshes of Quebec and its vicinity, which may be said to be the extremest northern point from which we have continuous and authentic annual information of their appearance. At that time the slaughter of the snipe on the marshes of Chateau Richer, and of the islands farther down the St. Lawrence, is prodigious. There they linger until the frosts become so severe as to drive them from their feeding-grounds, which generally takes place early in September, from which time, throughout that month, all October, and a portion—more or less according to the season—of November, and even December, every likely swamp, morass, and feeding-ground of Canada west, of the western, midland, and eastern states, from which they are not persecuted and banished by the incessant banging of pot-hunters and idle village boys, swarms with them, in quantities sufficient to afford sport to hundreds, and a delicacy to thousands of our inhabitants, if they were protected from useless and unmeaning persecution, by which alone they are prevented from being as numerous among us as at any former period. For I am well assured, that, unlike the woodcock, which, breeding in our midst, and dwelling with us for months at a time, is annually slaughtered while breeding, hatching, or immature, and is thus in rapid progress toward extirpation—the snipe, unmolested in its breeding-grounds, is not diminished in its numerical production, but is rendered scarcer in thickly settled districts, nigh to large towns, by incessant harassing, which drives it to remoter and securer feeding-grounds. I do not mean by this, however, to assert that the abolition of spring snipe-shooting would not be an advantage—on the contrary, I am convinced that it would; although well assured that no such measure can be hoped at the hands of our legislators; for, as the snipe ordinarily lays four eggs, the destruction of each one of the breeders on their way northward, of course diminishes the stock of the coming season by five birds.