v CHARADRIIDAE 291 
flight on rising, remain to be mentioned, while the alternate zig- 
zag rise and fall of the bird when circling in the air near its 
nest, with the curious drumming or bleating noise produced at 
each descent must not be omitted. The method of production of 
this sound is still uncertain, but is either due to the vibration 
of the wings, or more probably to that of the webs of the outer 
rectrices. The slight nest is formed in a tuft of herbage in some 
marshy place, the four pointed eggs being olive, with spots and 
oblique blotches of brown. Snipe occasionally perch on, trees or 
squat upon the ground until touched, The very similar G. delicata 
(wilsont), breeding northwards from the northern United States, 
and migrating to northern South America, has usually sixteen 
rectrices, as have the six following species. G. majo7, the Double 
or Solitary Snipe, nests as far south in Europe as Holland and 
Poland, and reaches the Yenesel; it is known from the Tian-Shan 
Mountains, Turkestan, and Persia, and winters even in Natal and 
Damara-Land, visiting Britain annually on passage. It rises 
silently and heavily when flushed, is to some extent nocturnal, 
and drums when on the ground. The three outer tail-feathers 
are chiefly white.’ G. frenata, ranging from Argentina and Tara- 
paca to Venezuela and Guiana; G. nobilis of Colombia and Ecuador, 
G. paraguaiae, reaching from Amazonia and Bolivia to the Falk- 
lands, G. macrodactyla (berniert) of Madagascar, and G. aequa- 
torialis (nigripennis), of the Ethiopian Region generally, conclude 
this section of the genus. G. australis is similar to our Snipe, 
but larger; it breeds in Japan, and migrates through Formosa to 
Australia; G. nemoricola, the Wood-Snipe of the hills of India 
and Burma, has the lower parts distinctly barred; G. solitaria, 
breeding at considerable elevations from Turkestan to Assam and 
Japan, and wintering in those countries and China, exhibits dis- 
tinct pwhite streaks above. In the three last-named species the 
rectrices number about eighteen, in the next six they may be as 
few as fourteen. South America furnishes five forms somewhat like 
Woodcocks in their habits and eggs, namely, G. gigantea of Brazil 
and Paraguay, the largest of the Snipes; G. undulata of Guiana; G. 
jamesont, ranging from Colombia to Bolivia; G. imperialis of the 
former country ; and G. stricklandi of Chili and Patagonia. All 
these recall the Common Snipe by their coloration, as does the 
small short-winged G. wucklandica, which, with its different races, 
1 For habits, see Dresser, Birds of Ewrope, vii. 1871-1881, pp. 635-637. 
