The Snipes. 475 



The tail-feathers when complete are 

 twenty-six in number. Of these eight, 

 or even ten, may be termed soft and 

 broad. The others rapidly narrow and 

 become stiff, the outermost feathers re- 

 sembling a stout pin. 



The bill of the Common Snipe, in 

 addition to being longer, is also much 

 broader near the tip and covered with 

 more numerous pits than in that of the 

 Pin-tail Snipe. 



The weight of the two species is much 

 the same, but the Pin-tail, according to 

 Messrs. Hume and Marshall, is, on the 

 average, a trifle lighter than the Common 

 Snipe. 



Allied to the Pin-tail Snipe is Swinhoe's 

 Snipe (G. megala\ which extends, accord- 

 ing to season, from Siberia to the Malay 

 Archipelago, and is extremely likely to be 

 met with in Burma and the Shan States. 

 It differs from the Pin-tail only in the 

 structure of its tail, which has twenty 

 feathers instead of twenty-six. But the 

 tails of Snipes are very often imperfect, 

 and the process of counting the number 

 of feathers in the tail tedious ; so that 

 it will be sufficient for the purpose of 

 discriminating the two species to notice 



