388 SCOLOPACIDiE. 



stantly stouter tarsus, but which in summer has a much 

 more rufous breast, and which is identified by some orni- 

 thologists with T. ruficollis, Pallas. Both the species and 

 their synonymy are involved in great confusion, and the 

 identifications of some high authorities have been repudiated 

 by others. It will suffice to say that our T. minuta visits 

 on migration the greater part of Southern Asia, passing 

 over the lofty mountain ranges by the Pamir, and also by 

 Gilgit, and occurring in Siberia in summer at least as far 

 east as Lake Baikal, from which locality undoubted specimens 

 are available for examination. On the Amoor, and on the 

 Stanowoi Mountains, and thence to the Sea of Okhotsk, it 

 appears to be represented by the Long-toed Stint, T. suhmi- 

 niita, Middendorfl", a species which also visits India, Ceylon, 

 China, and Japan. Only a monograph by some competent 

 authority can clear up the matter, and in treating of the 

 Little Stint as a British Bird it is unnecessary to contribute 

 in any way to the existing tangle. 



The breeding-grounds of the Little Stint were correctly, 

 albeit vaguely, supposed to be situated in the northern 

 districts of Europe and Asia ; but no authentic informa- 

 tion seems to have been obtained before the celebrated 

 journey of Middendorff to Siberia. That intrepid traveller 

 found the Little Stint on the Taimyr river in 74° N. lat., 

 where he obtained a clutch of four eggs with the parent 

 bird on the 1st July, and young in down on the 10th of that 

 month (Sibirische Reise, ii. p. 221). It was only much 

 farther to the eastward that he obtained the Long-toed 

 Stint, which he distinguished by the name of T. suhminuta. 

 For years the dreary Taimyr Peninsula was the only known 

 breeding-haunt of this species, but in 1872, Messrs. Alston 

 and Harvie-Brown obtained a bird in full nuptial plumage 

 on the 21st June, at the mouth of the Dwina, showing 

 that the summer range of the Little Stint extended farther 

 to the westward than was previously anticipated. In the 

 same year Mr. Collett found the species common on the 

 island of Tamso, in the Porsanger-fiord, in July ; and in 

 1875, Messrs. Seebohm and Harvie-Brown started for the 



