298 



SCOLOPACIN,*. 



without shelter of any kind, and occasionally it may be met with out on bare plains, some 



distance from water. When flushed it (lies straight, and near the ground, and if there is any 



cover it is exceedingly difficult to make it rise a second time. 



Its food is obtained chielly in the mud on the margins or near the edges of swamps and 



lagoons, and consists of small molluscs, aquatic insects and worms. 



The adult female possesses an abnormally elongated trachea, which, passing down between 



the skin and the pectoral muscles, makes four distinct convolutions before entering the lungs. 



The peculiar conformation of this organ was discovered by Gould during h.s visit to New South 



Wales in 1837-8, and it has rarely failed to excite the wonder and admiration of those who 



have had an opportunity of examining one since. 



This species is represented in the Australian Museum Collection, among others, by specimens 



obtained in New South Wales from the Clarence River, Glen Innes, Merriwa, the Lachlan 



River, and from near Goulburn. The preceding description ot the adult male is taken from a 



mounted specimen in the Exhibit Collection, and is the most beautifully marked one I have seen ; 



it was obtained by Mr. Henry Chisholm at Woologorang, near Breadalbane. The figure 



represents an adult male. 



There is a variation in the extent of the white mottlings to the blackish-brown feathers on 



the under parts of adult females ; as a rule it is confined to the chin and upper throat, on others 



it extends to the feathers of the 

 fore-neck, and there is also a 

 variation in the extent of the rich 

 chestnut patch on the upper 

 portion of the hind-neck; in some 

 females it is entirely absent, but 

 this is probably due to youth, 

 for the fore-neck is paler and 

 much mottled with white. 



From Broken Hill, South- 

 western New South \\'ales. Dr. 

 W. Macgillivray wrote as fol- 

 lows : — I first met with Rostratiila 

 niistralis on the Flinders River, 

 Queensland, in 1887, a black 

 boy who was with me killing 

 one with a stone, whilst it was 

 probing the mud at the side of a 

 waterhole. Jn Western New 

 South Wales I have only met 

 with it once, in the very wet summer of 1904, when the lakes and swamps were all full and 

 overflowing. On the verandah of Mr. Dawes' Topar Station, I with some Broken Hill friends 

 were listening to Mr. Dawes experiences of a life in the l>ack country, when our attention was 

 directed to a booming call, like that of the Bittern, coming at intervals from distant and different 

 points of the plains ; the note was of about the same tone and pitch as that of the Bittern 

 (Botaiinis pariloptilns), but more frequently repeated, and at shorter intervals, and as no Bittern 

 had been seen about, and there was no cover anywhere for one, we came to the conclusion that 

 it was the note of some other bird or animal. Next day we flushed several Painted Snipe from 

 large crab holes and small swamps on the plains, and could not help conjecturing whether, 

 taken in conjunction with the structural peculiarity of the windpipe of the female of this species, 

 the booming sound could have been produced by this bird." 



PAINTKI) SNIPE. 



