Sabine's snipe. 343 



The stomachs of two shot by Mr. J. E. Harting-, near 

 Yarmouth, contained, in one, the remains of a crab 

 and five or six small univalves, genus Turho ; the other^ 

 small beetles and grit. 



SCOLOPAX SABINII, Vigors. 

 SABINE'S SNIPE. 



Whether this singular bird is entitled or not to 

 specific rank I must leave to abler ornithologists than 

 myself to decide, but although the opinion unques- 

 tionably gains ground that it is a variety only of the 

 common snipe, I consider that with some future Selby 

 or Yarrell must rest the responsibility of removing it 

 from the " List" of British Birds. Under these circum- 

 stances the occurrence of a single example of the 

 so-called Sabine's Snipe in Norfolk, enables me to 

 introduce it for the first time amongst the more recent 

 additions to the avi-fauna of this county. 



On the 17th of October, 1856, a bird answering in 

 every respect to the description of this snipe, as given 

 by Mr. Vigors in the fourteenth volume of the Linnean 

 Society's "Transactions" (as republished by Yarrell and 

 others), was shot in a turnip field at Rainham, near 

 Pakenham, by Mr. Martin Tupper Smith, and was after- 

 wards preserved for the son of that gentleman, then an 

 undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, by Mr. 

 Baker, of that town. Mr. Osbert Salvin, who had the 



" sprouting," whicli " had grown three-quarters of an inch, the bases 

 of the feathers being, of course, in a succulent state." If this 

 late moulting be really a fact, and not an accidental occurrence, it 

 may in some measure help to account for the late breeding. 



