436 Scolopacidce. 



Gallwey, who is the highest living authority on shore-shooting, 

 and he speaks of the vast numbers of Knots which frequent the 

 coast and the tidal harbours and estuaries, and relates how he 

 once killed 160 at a shot with his big gun, having mistaken 

 them on a dark evening for Plover.* Still more emphatic is the 

 testimony of Mr. Cordeaux as to the extraordinary gathering of 

 Knots on the Humber flats, and the noise made by their occa- 

 sional short flights along the coast ; the roar, or rather rush, 

 made by their wings in flight reminding him, more than any- 

 thing else, of the noise made by a mighty host of Starlings when 

 settling down for the night. Thousands and thousands of Knots 

 were massed together on the foreshore as the tide was coming in : 

 here crowded as closely as they could sit, there again straggling 

 out into a more open line, and there again massed together by 

 thousands. Some hundreds of yards in length and about thirty 

 in breadth, along the edge of the water, were fairly crowded with 

 them.-)- Colonel Hawker in his time, and provided only with the 

 clumsy punt-gun of old, says, ' Knots sit on the edge of the mud 

 so thick that you may sometimes kill the whole company at a 

 shot ;'J and Selby speaks of the vast numbers which frequent the 

 ooze on the coast. 



I have three instances of the occurrence of this bird in 

 Wiltshire. The first, a male, killed at the side of the rail- 

 way cutting at Langley, in 1850, by Mr. Bethell, of Kellaways 

 Mill, and, I believe, still in his possession ; the second, killed 

 at Seend in February, 1870, as recorded by Mr. Grant ; and the 

 third, reported to me by Mr. W. Wyndham, as shot by his keeper 

 at Langford on December 10th, 1879. As it is generally seen in 

 England in winter garb, the Knot is of very sober plumage, 

 composed of ash-gray above and white beneath ; but in summer 

 dress it is far more attractive. Keddish-brown above and rich 

 reddish-chestnut below render it very gay, and enable it to vie 

 with the Gray and Golden Plover in their respective nuptial 



< The Fowler in Ireland,' p. 24. 



t 'Birds of the Humber District,' p. 134, and Zoologist for 1866, p. 75. 



$ ' Instructions to Young Sportsmen,' p. 230. 



