54 The Ottawa Naturalist. [June 



marking - , but as I had received other specimens illustrative ot 

 oology, purporting to be those of certain species which after- 

 wards proved not to be correct, I concluded, for the time, that 

 such was also the case in this instance, and that my new-found 

 set of eggs were those of the woodcock. So the matter remained 

 until the close of the year when my esteemed ornithological friend, 

 Mr. W. E. Saunders, of London, made me a welcome visit, and 

 on looking over my oological collection I drew his attention to 

 the first and only set of " woodcock's " eggs that I had ever col- 

 lected. Mr. Saunders at once denied the identification ; a dispute 

 followed, and while I admitted that I might be mistaken, yet I 

 was certain that the specimens in question if not those of the 

 woodcock were these of Wilson's snipe. This identification Mr. 

 Saunders also disputed, stating that he had in his collection speci- 

 mens of the eggs of the European snipe, which he understood 

 were similar to those of Wilson's and that there was a wide dif- 

 ference between the appearance of " his " specimens and those 

 under review; so, in order to settle the question at issue Mr. 

 Saunders kindly undertook to send one of the eggs to the author- 

 ities of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington and have the 

 specimen properly identified. The following note from Mr. 

 Saunders, under date of Feb. 28, 1906, tells the sequel. "I have 

 received the egg back from the Washington people, and return it 

 to you by this mail. They say that it is the egg of the European 

 snipe, which, of course, means Wilson's when taken in Canada. 

 I have eggs supposed to be those of the European snipe myself, 

 which are nothing like those at all, but I have no doubt their 

 identification is correct." 



Of the nesting habits of Gallinago delicta but little of a 

 reliable character is yet known. When Mr. Mcllwraith published 

 the second edition of his '' Birds of Ontario," in 1894, he wrote 

 of this bird as " a species known only as a spring and fall migrant 

 in southern Ontario, ' and of its nesting habits he had only 

 vague reports ; and from a reference to what little was known 

 about it, in eastern Canada, he springs almost at a bound to some 

 intimations of its existence in almost unexplored regions of 

 Alaska. In the more recent and extensive " Catalogue of Cana- 

 dian Birds" there are indications that the life-habits and distribu- 



