“They don’t stool,” said Bill, “and only utter a krieking kind of cry; but in October they come here very thick, and we walk them up over the meadows. Why, you can shoot a hundred a day.” “A most excellent bird they are, too--fat and delicate. They are the latest of the bay-snipe in returning from the summer breeding-places; and as they rise and fly from you, they afford extremely pretty shooting. They are sometimes called short-neck, and are, in a gastronomic point of view, the best bay-snipe that is put upon the table.” “We call the bay-birds usually snipe,” said the first speaker; “but I have been told they are not snipe at all. Refer to Giraud again and give us the truth.” This fell, of course, to my share, and I commenced as follows: “I read you yesterday about the plovers, and immediately after them we find an account of the turnstone, _strepsilas interpres_, which is nothing else than our beautiful brant-bird or horse-foot snipe, as it is called farther south, because it feeds on the spawn of the horse-foot. This pretty but unfortunate bird belongs to no genus whatever, and has been to the ornithologists a source of great tribulation. They have sometimes considered it a sandpiper and sometimes not, so you may probably call it what you please; and as brant-bird is a rhythmical name, it will answer as well as _strepsilas interpres_; if you have not a fluent tongue, perhaps somewhat better. Of the snipes, or _scolopacidæ_, the only true representative is the dowitcher, _scolopax noveboracensis_. “Hold on,” shouted Bill; “say that last word over again.” “_Noveboracensis._” “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.”