ll which, by the way, I
quite agree with you. But I don't want to lose the rest of your
lucubrations on this most interesting topic. What do you think becomes
of the birds in August, after the moult begins?"

"Verily, Commodore, that is a positive poser. Many good sportsmen
believe that they remain where they were before; getting into the
thickest and wettest brakes, refusing to rise before the dog, and giving
out little or no scent!"

"Do you believe this?"

"No; I believe there is a brief migration, but whither I cannot tell you
with any certainty. Some birds do stay, as they assert; and that a few
do stay, and do give out enough scent to enable dogs to find them, is a
proof to me that all do not. A good sportsman can always find a few
birds even during the moult, and I do not think that birds killed at
that time are at all worse eating than others. But I am satisfied that
the great bulk shift their quarters, whither I have not yet fully
ascertained; but I believe to the small runnels and deep swales which
are found throughout all the mountain tracts of the middle States; and
in these, as I believe, they remain dispersed and scattered in such
small parties that they are not worth looking after, till the frost
drives them down to their old haunts. A gentleman, whom I can depend on,
told me once that he climbed Bull Hill one year late in September--Bull
Hill is one of the loftiest peaks in the Highlands of the Hudson--merely
to show the prospect to a friend, and he found all the brushwood on the
summit full of fine autumn cock, not a bird having been seen for weeks
in the low woodlands at the base. They had no guns with them at the
time, and some days elapsed before he could again spare a few hours to
hunt them up; in the meantime frost came, the birds returned to their
accustomed swamps and levels, and, when he did again scale the rough
mountain, not a bird rewarded his trouble. This, if true, which I do not
doubt, would go far to prove my theory correct; but it is not easy to
arrive at absolute certainty, for if I am right, during that period
birds are to be found no where in abundance, and a man must be a
downright Audubon to be willing to go mountain-stalking--the hardest
walking in the world, by the way--purely for the sake of learning the
habits of friend Scolopax, with no hope of getting a good bag after
all."

"How late have you ever killed a cock previous to their great southern
flight?"

"Never myself b