Malayan Ornithology. 11 



the words ' Did he do it ! Pity to do it/ A male^ shot at 

 Saiyong, Perak^ on 13th April, measured about 12^ inches in 

 length, tarsus 3 ; beak red, black at its tip ; orbits and wattles 

 red ; irides red-brown ; legs yellow ; head, neck, and breast 

 deep black ; ear-coverts, streak down each side of neck, band 

 across upper part of the back, abdomen, and the tail white, 

 the last broadly barred with black ; upper parts and wing- 

 coverts dull brown, glossed with metallic shades of purple 

 and green ; greater coverts broadly tipped with white ; wing- 

 quills black ; the shoulder furnished with a short blunt spur ; 

 hind toe very minute. Its stomach contained vegetable 

 matter and particles of quartz/^ 



Strepsilas interpres, Linn. The Turnstone. 



About the middle of April 1877 a Malay brought me a 

 cage of eighteen or twenty Turnstones, which he said he 

 had netted on the sands near the mouth of the Moar 

 river ; they were in most beautiful plumage. 



I saw large flocks of Turnstones scuttling about at the 

 water's edge on the beach at Pulo Nongsa during September, 

 and shot one or two of them . 



Gallinago stenura (Temm.) . The Pintail Snipe. 



Although the European Snipe [G. scolopacina) is occa- 

 sionally found, the one commonly met with in the Malay 

 States is the Pintail Snipe (G. stenura), dozens (I think I 

 may almost say hundreds) of it being obtained for one of 

 the former. But in general appearance the two species are 

 so alike that any body not a naturalist, nor of a very inqui- 

 ring nature, may easily shoot throughout a wdiole season in 

 that land of the longbills, Province Wellesley, without know- 

 ing that his spoil differs in the least from the well-known 

 Snipe of the British Isles. 



But if, while resting from his labours after a few hours' 

 plodding through mud and water under the blazing sun of 

 those parts, he will turn out his well-filled bag and carefully 

 examine its contents, it will be found that, with hardly an ex- 

 ception, the birds are " Pintails.^^ 



The tail, instead of being of soft rounded feathers, as is 



