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That sphere, there is no doubt, is that indicated by his name, and it is in a country of bogs and marshes, like the south and west of Ireland, of which he was originally a native, where snipe and wildfowl provide the staple sport of the gunner, that he is in his element and seen at his best, though, no doubt, he can do excellent work as an ordinary retriever, and is often used as such.
The vociferous spur-winged lapwing; the beautiful black and white stilt; a true snipe, and a painted snipe, are, strictly speaking, the only residents; and it is astonishing to find, that, of the five-and-twenty species, at least thirteen are visitors from North America, several of them having their breeding-places quite away in the Arctic regions.
He was also incarnate in the Turi, or snipe. At the stated time of worship no one went from home, and no strangers were allowed to pass through the land. Only men were allowed to partake in the offerings of food; women and children were excluded from any share. At another place his image was a large wooden bowl, said to have come from Fiji. He was also supposed to be present in a hollow stone.
Each egg is the size of a pigeon's, and marked with either blood or chocolate-coloured splashes and spots of irregular shape. The shell, when the egg is laid, is covered with a strong adhesive coating. At night they assembled in vast numbers on an islet in the lagoon, to roost on the trees. They are about the size of an Australian snipe, and their forms are models of elegance and beauty.
A very similar bird is often seen on the salt-water beaches of New England, which resembles this Ceylon example in shape, size, and habits, but not in the texture of its feathers. The American bird also called snipe is of a uniform pale lavender color. It is shy enough on our coast, but its tropical brother is as tame as a pigeon.
Snipe, too, killed by the despairing lover while standing in a paddy-field up to his knees in water, with a tropical sun beating on his head, to be eaten afterwards in military society, not undiluted by pale ale and brandy-pawnee, afford a relief to the finer feelings of his nature as delightful as it is unaccountable; while those more adventurous spirits who, penetrating far into the mountainous regions of the north-west frontier, persecute the wild sheep or the eland, and even make acquaintance with the lordly ibex "rocketing" down from crag to crag, breaking the force and impetus of his leap by alighting on horns and forehead, would seem to gain in their life of hardship and adventure an immunity from the "common evil" which lasts them well into middle age.
There were quantities of plovers, and a great many partridges, of two kinds, large and small, and the numerous lagunes were covered with and surrounded by water-fowl of all kinds wild swans and ducks, snipe, white storks, grey herons, black cormorants, and scarlet flamingoes, the last-named standing at the edge of the water, catching fish, and occasionally diving below the surface.
Then with a loud splash and cackling, up would spring a knot of ducks, their wings whirring as they rapidly beat the air in a flight wonderful for such a heavy bird. Again a little farther and first one and then another snipe would dart away in zigzag flight, uttering their strange scape, scape.
I'll see that you get a couple of cribs of turf. Your lodge is damp under the trees." "Thank your Ladyship," said the old woman with another dip. "I'm wonderful souple in my limbs, considerin' everythin'; for the same house would give a snipe a cowld. The blankets are a great comfort. They're as warm as Injia." "Oh, I'm glad of that."
How different again are all these from the aerial pastimes of the snipe, in which the bird, in its violent descent, is able to produce such wonderful, far-reaching sounds with its tail-feathers! The snipe, as a rule, is a solitary bird, and, like the oscillating finch mentioned early in this paper, is content to practise its pastimes without a witness.
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