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 Turbo; 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 
Fakenham, 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,” which “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. 
