A very good English sportsman resident in Philadelphia, who is perfectly familiar with both the species and their distinctions, assures me that during the past winter a friend brought for his inspection an undoubted English woodcock, which he had purchased in the market; it weighed twelve ounces, measured twenty-five inches from wing to wing, and had the cream-colored barred breast which I have described. The keeper of the stall at which this bird was purchased did not know where it had been killed, but averred that several birds had previously been in his possession, precisely similar to this in every respect. It is not a little remarkable that the same gentleman who saw this bird, and unhesitatingly pronounced it an European cock, was informed by a sporting friend that he had seen in Susquehanna county a cock, which he was satisfied must have measured twenty-five inches in extent, but which he unfortunately missed. There is likewise, at this time, in the city a skull and bill of a woodcock of very unusual dimensions, of which I am promised a sight, and which, from the description, I am well nigh convinced is of the European species. It is possible that these birds may have been brought over and kept in confinement, and subsequently escaped, and so become naturalized in America; and yet it is difficult to conceive that persons should have taken the trouble of preserving so stupid and uninteresting a bird as the woodcock in a cage, unless for the purpose of transporting them from one country to another in order to the introduction of new species. This might be done very easily with regard to some species, and with undoubted success; and it has greatly surprised me that it has never been attempted with regard to our American woodcock, which might unquestionably be naturalized in England with the greatest facility; where it would, I have no doubt, multiply extraordinarily, and become one of the most numerous and valuable species of game, as the mildness of the winters in ordinary seasons would permit the bird to remain perennially in the island, without resorting to migration in order to obtain food. The woodcock and snipe can both be very readily domesticated, and can be easily induced to feed on bread and milk reduced to the consistency of pulp, of which they ultimately become extremely fond. This is done at first by throwing a few small red worms into the bread and milk, for which the birds bore and bill, as if it were in their natural muddy soil. In all countries in which any species of the woodcock is found, it is a bird essentially of moderate climates, abhorring and shunning all extremes of temperature, whether of heat or of cold.