300 WOODCOCK AND SNIPE 



however, they would seem to fall into the sea from sheer exhaustion. 

 Thus Mr. Falconer, of Christchurch, has recorded l the fact that " some 

 years ago, a few miles from the Land's End, the sea was strewn with 

 hundreds of dead woodcock." 



SNIPE 

 [W. P. PYCRAFT] 



The distinctions and peculiarities of plumage of the three species 

 of Snipe which are to be met with in the British Islands have already 

 been discussed at sufficient length : it now remains to epitomise their 

 life-histories. 



Though all, apparently, obtain the bulk of their food by probing, 

 none have undergone such a high degree of specialisation, to facili- 

 tate this method of feeding, as is seen in the case of the woodcock. 

 This is a curious and interesting fact, which demands further study. 

 It would seem that we must assume, either that the woodcock probes 

 more, is more dependent upon the capture of food after this fashion 

 than the snipe, or that the peculiar " telescoping " of the long axis of 

 the skull, having proved a useful variation, has, in the woodcock, 

 reached, so to speak, its logical conclusion, while in the snipe it is 

 only on the way towards this consummation. It is significant to 

 remark in this connection, that this shortening of the long axis of the 

 skull is least conspicuous in the jack-snipe, which seems to be less 

 dependent on its probing powers than its congeners, being able to 

 subsist to no small extent on a vegetable diet. It was commonly 

 supposed, indeed, that neither the woodcock nor the common-snipe 

 showed this ability to turn vegetarian at need. This is not so, as 

 Newstead has shown (see pp. 277-279) ; and I have just dissected a 

 common-snipe whose gizzard contained several seeds of the bog-bean 



1 Zoologist, 1848, p. 2023. 



