GALLINAGO GALLINULA. PAS 
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 a 
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 hollow road: it came in fours, with a similar cadence 
and a like clean yet hollow sound. The same day we found a nest 
which seemed to be of a kind unknown to me. The next morning I 
went to Kharto-uoma with a good strength of beaters. I kept them 
as well as I could in line, myself in the middle, my Swedish 
travelling companion [Herr Salomon] on one side and the Finn 
talker on the other. Whenever a bird was put off its nest the man 
who saw it was to pass on the word, and the whole line was to stand 
whilst I went to examine the eggs, and take them at once or observe 
the bearings of the spot for another visit, as might be necessary. 
We had not been many hours in the marsh when I saw a bird 
get up before Herr Salomon, and I marked it down. In the mean- 
time the nest was found, and when I came up the owner was 
declared to have appeared striped on the back and not white over 
the tail. A sight of the eggs as they lay untouched raised my 
expectations to the highest pitch. I went to the spot where I had 
marked the bird, put it up again, found that it was indeed a Jack 
Snipe, and again saw it after a short, low flight drop suddenly into 
cover; once more it rose a few feet from where it had settled, 
I fired, and in a minute had in my hand a true Jack Snipe, the 
undoubted parent of the nest of eggs. I walked as composedly as 
possible back to my friend; he said “ A common bird, I suppose ? ” 
I replied “ Yes, very”; but I shook him warmly by the hand, and 
told him that common birds sometimes lay very rare eggs. As 
usual, I took measures to let the whole party share in my grati- 
fication before I again gave the word to advance. In the course 
of the day and night I found three more nests, and examined the 
birds of each. One allowed me to touch it with my hand before 
it rcse, and another only got up when my foot was within six inches 
of it. It was very fortunate that I was thus able satisfactorily to 
identify so fine a series of eggs, for they differ considerably from 
one another. I was never afterwards able to see a nest myself, 
though I beat through numbers of swamps. Several with eggs, 
mostly hard sat upon, were found by people cutting hay in boggy 
places in July. I have spent a good many hours this present year 
(1854) im the same Kharto-uoma without finding one, though I had 
