346 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
'markable whether the bird is regarded as a melanism 
of S. gallinago, or as a new and distinct species. 
Several examples have now been recorded in various 
parts of England, and at least ten in Ireland, on the 
authority of Mr. Thompson, including the original one 
described by Mr. Vigors, which was shot in Queen’s 
county, on the 21st of August, 1822; and one now in 
the Norwich Museum (No. 236), presented by Mr. 
Alfred Newton, who procured it from the Museum 
of Trinity College, Dublin, which at that time possessed 
several other local specimens. An example recorded 
and minutely described by Mr. Hearle Rodd, of 
Penzance (‘Zoologist,” p. 7882), as having been killed 
near Carnauton, in Cornwall, in January, 1862, was 
examined, amongst other naturalists, by Mr. Gould, 
whose previous opinion as to its want of specific distinc- 
tion was confirmed by the appearance of fourteen tail- 
feathers as in S. gallinago, and not twelve only as 
described by Mr. Vigors, which agrees with Mr. Salvin’s 
account of the Norfolk bird; and two specimens men- 
tioned by Thompson in his “Birds of Ireland,” had 
each thirteen tail-feathers, having evidently lost one. 
In this important point, therefore, the “black snipe” 
resembles 8. gallinago. Another alleged difference 
between this bird and the common snipe, that it makes 
no cry on being flushed, seems equally unfounded, as 
Thompson states in his “Birds of Ireland” of two 
birds shot; one that rose with the common snipes did 
not ‘ squeak,’ as the latter usually do when sprung, and 
that after being once fired at, it perched quite near 
again like a jack snipe. The other rose in company 
with a common snipe, and uttered a similar cry, but 
for which it would have escaped, as its colour led the 
sportsman at first sight to believe it to be a water- 
rail. 
Mr. J. HE. Harting, who has examined no less than 
