GREAT SNIPE. 30l 
Norwich Museum, is only an unusual variety of the 
common snipe’s. Mr. Alfred Newton, to whom I recently 
forwarded it for comparison with his fine series of eggs, 
both of the great and common snipe, remarks, “ I can 
nearly match it as to colour and entirely as to size 
by common snipes’ eggs in my collection, while it is 
considerably smaller than any great snipe’s I have. 
I can scarcely doubt its being a common snipe’s, the 
slight difference in colour from mine being owing, 
probably to exposure to light or air, or both.” The 
ereat snipe also breeds much later than the common 
species ;* besides, as before stated, being extremely 
rare, aS a spring migrant. 
Mr. Lubbock, in his “Fauna,” as well as in 
notes supplied to the late Mr. Yarrell, gives some 
interesting particulars of this bird from his own 
observations. In flight, he says, “it does not appear 
strikingly larger than the common snipe, which it does 
not much exceed in length from bill to tail, or extent 
of wing; its bulk is the effect of high condition. Of 
many fresh specimens which I have examined, all, 
without exception, were lumps of fat. One which I 
shot burst from the fall. In rising it may at once 
be distinguished from the common snipe by the tail, 
which spreads out like a fan, and shows a great deal 
of white. It lies until nearly trodden upon, and its 
flight is slow and heavy. A drier marsh seems to 
content it than those which the snipe and jack snipe 
delight in. But this may arise in some degree from 
the early period at which they arrive.” The term 
“ solitary’ he considers as misapplied to this species, 
* Mr. Hoy, who found many of their nests in Holland, describes 
them as breeding early in May; and the Rev. H. B. Tristram 
found them breeding in great numbers in marshy swamps, 
near Bods, in Nordland, in the early part of the summer. Sce 
Hewitson’s “ Eggs of British Birds,” 3rd ed., vol ii. 
