314 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



North Uist, single birds have been flushed and shot as late as the 

 second week in June. The resident keeper on that island persists 

 in saying that Jack Snipes breed there, but I have never had an 

 opportunity of examining a bird shot off the nest, which appears 

 to be the only true way of settling all doubt on the subject. 



Mr Hewitson mentions in his British Oology that he has seen 

 the Jack Snipe at Prestwick Carr, near Newcastle, after the 

 common snipe had begun to lay its eggs. " I have very little 

 doubt," he adds, " that some of them remain to breed on the 

 extensive moors and morasses of Scotland and Ireland. Such 

 places are frequented only by the cutters of peat, and are very 

 rarely trodden either by the ornithologist or any one interested in 

 his favourite subject; neither is it the time of year for the pursuits 

 of the sportsman." 



Mr Thompson, in his ' Birds of Ireland,' gives what he considers 

 a well-authenticated instance of the Jack Snipe breeding in 

 Ireland, near the town of Bally hannis, (Co. Mayo,) on the property 

 of Lord Dillon ; and I have been informed by Mr Angus that, in 

 one instance, at least, a nest was discovered in Aberdeenshire by 

 J. W. Stuart Burnett, of Keithhall. Writing on the birds found 

 breeding in Sutherlandshire, Mr Harvie Brown has the following 

 remarks: "On different occasions I have been assured that the 

 Jack Snipe breeds in the county, and that the young have been 

 shot in August, etc. These accounts were frequently from persons 

 who must have been perfectly acquainted with the bird. In vain, 

 however, have I attempted to obtain a nest of eggs, along with the 

 old bird, by offering a large reward, and the fact still remains, I 

 believe, that no collection yet contains thoroughly identified and 

 well-authenticated British specimens." 



THE BROWN SNIPE. 



MACRORHAMPHUS GRISEUS. 



THROUGH the kindness of Dr J. A. Smith of Edinburgh, I am 

 enabled to record this North American species as a rare straggler 

 to our Scottish shores. A specimen, the sex of which has not been 

 noted, was shot at Dunbarnie Links, near Largo, in September, 

 1867, by Mr Hutcheson, gamekeeper to Robert Rintoul, Esq., of 

 Lawhill, and exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Physical Society. 



