SCOLOPACIM. 229 



shown me the female bird sitting on its eggs in a 

 plantation within a few minutes' walk of the house. 

 The nest is a mere hollow in the ground, lined 

 with a few dead leaves. I have also seen another 

 in the act of incubation, in an oak coppice at 

 Barkfold, near Kirdford. By cautiously creeping 

 towards the spot on my hands and knees, I suc- 

 ceeded in approaching within a few yards, and 

 could see the full black eye of the bird apparently 

 fixed upon me. When at last sufficiently alarmed 

 to quit the nest, instead of flying away hurriedly, 

 she quietly slipped off it, and ran with an almost 

 noiseless pace for about twenty yards before she 

 took wing. The eggs, four in number, were sub- 

 sequently hatched. 



GREAT SNIPE, Scolopax major. An occasional 

 straggler. Has been killed on Pevensey levels, 

 and one was shot in the month of October, a few 

 years ago, by Mr. Trist, a wine-merchant at Brigh- 

 ton, on the Downs near the race-course, a singular 

 locality for this bird. 



COMMON SNIPE, Scolopax gallinago. Tolerably 

 abundant in the winter, on moors and extensive 

 tracts of low meadow land after the subsidence of 

 great floods. 



JACK SNIPE, Scolopax gallinula. Of less fre- 

 quent occurrence than the last, but not uncom- 

 mon. 



