44 SCOLOPACIDiE. 



killed in Devonshire in the month of October, is preserved 

 in the British Museum. According to Dr. Edward Moore, 

 and Mr. Bellamy, a second example has occurred in De- 

 vonshire, which is in the collection of Mr. Drew. A spe- 

 cimen was killed near Carlisle in 1835, which belongs to 

 T. C. Heysham, Esq. and which I have seen. A fourth 

 example was killed at Yarmouth in the autumn of 1836, 

 and is now in the possession of the Rev. Leonard Rudd, 

 residing in Yorkshire, who did me the favour to bring his 

 bird to London that I might see it. My kind friend, J. 

 H. Gurney, Esq. of Norwich, has two British killed spe- 

 cimens of this bird in his collection, one of which was 

 obtained in Norfolk so recently as the year 1840. 



This bird has been killed in Sweden, and figured by 

 M. Nilsson under the name of Scolopax Paykullii in his 

 Ornithologia Suecica, supposing it to be new, but corrected 

 his oversight in his Fauna Scandinavia ; it has also lately 

 been included among the Birds of Greenland, by Pro- 

 fessor John Reinhardt of Copenhagen, in a paper pub- 

 lished in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Denmark. 



This bird is very common in the United States of Ame- 

 rica, and is described by the American Naturalists, Wil- 

 son, Audubon, and Nuttall, in their respective histories of 

 the birds of that country. It was generally considered to 

 be a true Snipe, but the bill is intermediate in its length 

 between that of the true Snipes and the Sandpipers, and 

 some other peculiarities, in which it also differs from both, 

 as close examination will show, induced Dr. Leach to 

 propose for it a generic distinction, under the term Ma- 

 crorhamphus, by which it is now pretty generally known. 

 Mr. Aububon, in his account of this species, says, that 

 the Creoles of Louisiana call it Becassine de mer, an ap- 

 propriate name for the bird, since the beak is in structure, 



