At this period of the year woodcock are almost invariably found in the lowlands; sometimes, as, for instance, at Salem, in New Jersey, and many other similar localities along the low and level shores of the Delaware, in the wide, open meadows, where there is not a bush or brake to be seen for miles; but more generally in low, swampy woods, particularly in maple woods, which have an undergrowth of alder; along the margin of oozy streamlets, creeping through moist meadows, among willow thickets; and in wet pastures trampled by cattle, and set here and there with little brakes, which afford them shade and shelter during the heat of the day. Of the latter description is the ground, once so famous for its summer cock-shooting, known as “the drowned lands,” in Orange County, New York, extending for miles and miles along the margins of the Wallkill and its tributaries, the Black Creek, the Quaker Creek, and the beautiful Wawayanda. Many a day of glorious sport have I had on those sweet level meadows, enjoyed with friends long since dispersed and scattered, some dead, untimely, some in far distant lands, some false, and some forgetful, and thou, true-hearted, honest, merry, brave, Tom Draw; thou whilom king of hosts and emperor of sportsmen, thou, saddest fate of all, smitten, or ere thy prime was passed away, by the most fearful visitation that awaits mankind—the awful doom of blindness! never again shall I draw trigger on those once loved levels—the rail-road now thunders and whistles close beside them, and every man and boy and fool, now sports his fowling-piece; and not a woodcock on the meadows but, after running the gauntlet of a hundred shots, a hundred volleys, is consigned to the care of some conductor, by him to be delivered to Delmonico or Florence, for the benefit of fat, greasy merchant-princes; and if it were not so, if birds, swarmed as of yore in every reedy slank, by every alder-brake, in every willow tuft, the ground is haunted by too many recollections, rife with too many thick-succeeding memories to render it a fitting place, to me at least, for pleasurable or gay pursuits. But, as I have said before, summer cock-shooting on the Drowned Lands of Orange County, is among the things that have been—one of the stars that has set, never to be relumed, in the nineteenth century; and the glory of “the Warwick Woodlands” has departed.