GALLINAGO GALLINULA 118 



and extends throughout Northern Europe to Great Britain, in which 

 country it is said to have bred or been shot in the breeding season, 

 as far south as Yorkshire. 



During the breeding season the Jack Snipe makes a curious 

 sound whilst on the wing ; but it is very doubtful whether this 

 sound is " drumming " in the true sense of the word, and the best 

 observers still consider the sound a vocal one. 



Dr. Bahr thus writes about Gallinago gaUinula : — 



"The Jack Snipe has twelve tail feathers, of which the outer 

 threa are markedly shorter than the three central ones. Their texture 

 is soft and the rami are easily separated, in contradistinction to 

 those of the species we have already considered. On experiment, 

 these feathers produced no sound at all. 



"The structure of the outer web of the outer feathers more 

 nearly approaches that of the inner — a marked difference to that 

 found in the other feathers we have been considering; that is, the 

 rami of the outer web are provided with distal and proximal rows 

 of radii, and thus adhere together. The distal radii are provided 

 with four hamuli both in the outer and inner webs." 



Buturlin, writing to Dr. P. H. Bahr on the " drumming " of the 

 Jack Snipe, says : — 



" I heard it every day in the summer of 1905 when on the 

 Kolyma. The bird usually flies so high that even with the aid of 

 the midnight sun and good Zeiss binocular it is often quite invisible ; 

 nevertheless, the sound ' top-toppy, top-toppy' is quite clearly heard." 



Wolley's description of the breeding of this little Snipe still 

 remains the best and the most interesting and is therefore quoted 

 in extenso. He writes : — 



I scarcely like to tell you about the Jack Snipe ; anything I can 

 say must be so poor an expression of my real exultation at the 

 finding of this long-wished-for egg. It was on the 17th of June, 1853, 

 in the great marsh at Muonioniska that I first heard the Jack Snipe, 

 though at the time I could not at all guess what it was. An ex- 

 traordinary sound unlike anything I had heard before. I could not 

 tell from what direction it came, and it filled me with a curious 

 surprise. My Finnish interpreter (Theodore) thought it was a 

 Capercally, and at that time I could not contradict him ; but soon I 

 found that it was a small bird gliding at a wild pace at great height 

 over the marsh. I know not how better to describe the noise than 

 by likening it to the cantering of a horse in the distance over a hard 



