200 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH BIRDS 



flights of Snipe from the north of Europe arrive 

 about the middle or end of August ; but I suspect 

 that the majority of those first observed in Nor- 

 folk and other English counties about that season 

 are the home-bred Snipe that have then left their 

 breeding haunts. So far as my experience goes, in 

 the south of England the foreign Snipe do not come 

 in until the first week of November. 



The average weight of a Common Snipe is from 

 4 to 4i oz., and perhaps one in a hundred will pull 

 down the scale at 5 oz. Anything above this must 

 be considered an unusual weight. On Dec. 14, 

 1891, I received three Snipes from Tingwall, Ler- 

 wick, which weighed respectively 5f oz., 6^ oz., 

 and 6f oz. I weighed them myself, and they had 

 probably lost something of their original weight, 

 having been shot a few days previously. For good 

 ''bags" see the "Encyclopaedia of Sport," 1898. 



With regard to the so-called Sabine's Snipe, 

 when Vigors, in Aug. 1825, received from Queen's 

 Co., Ireland, a very dark, almost black, specimen of 

 a Snipe, he took it to be an undescribed species, and 

 named it after a distinguished contemporary (Trans. 

 Linn. Soc, xiv. p. 557). At irregular intervals other 

 specimens were subsequently obtained, and although 

 in none of these did the measurements difi'er appreci- 

 ably from those of the Common Snipe, the singular 

 coloration seemed to justify its separation from that 

 species. In Dec. 1870 there were at least five-and- 

 twenty examples on record (Field, Dec. 10, 1870), 

 and since that date the number of recorded speci- 



