snipe's
terrestrial surface lies two and a half inches beneath ours. At that
distance he strikes hard pan; but it is margin enough for his
operations, and he is not often caught among the shorts. Gourmands
assure us that he lives "by suction," and that there is consequently no
harm in eating his trail. There is comfort in this creed, whatever may
be our private belief in the substantiality of what the bird absorbs;
and we cheerfully eat, after the suggestion of Paul, "asking no
questions," the while tacitly assuring ourselves, like old Fuller with
the strawberry, that a better bird might doubtless have been made, but
as certainly never was. For game flavor not even the partridge (Bob
White), also exceptionally abundant here, is his superior.

But think, ye snow-bound, of the state of things implied in this
embarrassment of riches,--of a mid-winter table balanced between such a
choice, or, better, balanced by the adoption of both, one at each end!
Nor would this be near telling the whole story. Excluding fur and
sticking to feather, we have a wide range beyond. The larger birds we
may begin on, very moderately, with crane-steak, a transverse section
of our stately but distant friend the sand-hill. That is the form in
which he is thought to appear to best advantage. By the time you have
circumvented him by circumscribing him in the gradually narrowing
circuit of a buggy,--for stalking him, unless in higher grass than is
common at this season, is but vexation of spirit,--you will feel vicious
enough to eat him in any shape. His brother, the beautiful white bugler,
you will hardly meet at dinner, he being the shyest of his kind. A
Canada goose--not the tough and fishy bird of the Northern coast, but
grain- and grass-fed from fledging-time--is tender, delicate, and
everyway presentable. From the back upper gallery that looks upon the
prairie you are likely to see a company or battalion of his brethren,
their long black necks and white ties "dressing" capitally in line, and
their invisible legs doing the goose-step as the inventors of that
classic manoeuvre ought to do it. This bird seems to affect the
_militaire_ in all his movements. What can be more regular than the
wedge, like that so common in tactical history, in which he begins his
march, moving in "a column of attack upon the pole"? Even when startled
and put to flight, he goes off smoothly and quietly, company-front. In
foraging he is strictly systematic, and never f