14 The Irish Naturalist. 



As regards England, nearly all the occurrences of Sabine's 

 Snipe have been in the south and east, and a line drawn 

 across the map of England from the Wash on the east to the 

 junction of the Counties of Gloucester and Somerset on the 

 Severn on the west, would cut off on the north an area 

 from w^hich Sabine's Snipe has only twice been recorded — in 

 both cases in Yorkshire. In Wales it does not appear to have 

 yet been seen or captured, and the solitary Scotch example is 

 that recorded by Colonel Fielden in the Zoologist (ss. p. 3,188) 

 from Montrose. 



The only continental example I can find any record of is 

 " a light-coloured example now in the foreign collection of the 

 British Museum," and " stated by the late Jules Verraux to 

 have been shot near Paris" (Yarrell's "British Birds" 4 Ed., 

 vol. iii, p. 349). The history of this specimen might well 

 stand on stronger evidence.^ 



To sum up the distribution of Sabine's Snipe, it is confined 

 (with the exception of one somewhat doubtful specimen) to 

 the British Isles, and in them has occurred most frequently in 

 Ireland. In the south and south-east of England it has 

 /\A occurred .earl}^ as frequently as in Ireland, but in the north 

 and in Scotland it is almost unknown.^ 



The distribution of Sabine's Snipe shows a curious resem- 

 blance to that of another melanic animal, which was first 

 recorded from Ireland, viz., the melanic variety of the Common 

 Rat {JMus decunianus), which was described by Thompson as 

 Mils hiberniciis. This equally interesting form has occurred in 

 abundance (though sporadically) in man)^ parts of Ireland, and 



^ I have just examined this specimen. It is a very nice example, and 

 rather lighter all through than Vigors' type, which is also in the British 

 Museum collection. On the wooden stand on which it is fixed is a note 

 in pencil that it was obtained in February, 1854, and that it is a male, 

 but I could find no further details of its history at the Museum. 



- Since writing the above I have had the opportunity of examining two 

 additional Scotch examples of Sabine's vSnipe, which are preserved in the 

 collection of the British Museum of Natural History at South Ken- 

 sington. One of these was obtained at Clackmannan, in December, 1890, 

 and presented by Lord Balfour of Burleigh in 1891. The second, pre- 

 sented by Captain Verner, was obtained on Tiree Island, in the Outer 

 Hebrides, in January, 1887. It is more like a Common Snipe, especially 

 in the head, than any of the seven examples in the collection at South 

 Kensington— but it has no white on the under parts, and is certainly a 

 Sabine's Snipe. 



