Supplementary Notice of British Snipes. 29 
which, I understood, two guineas were immediately given by a 
collector in the neighbourhood. 
The next species is the Scélopax Sabinz of Mr. Vigors, the 
secretary to the Zoological Society (fg. 3.); the first record 
of which bird 
appeared in the 
fourteenth — vo- 
lume of the 
Transactions of 
the Linnean So- 
ciety, with a 
figure nearly, if 
not quite, of the 
natural size. 
The length of 
the bill in this 
species is 275 
inches ; the whole length of this bird 9;%; inches. The general 
colour of the plumage is dark brown, spotted and barred with 
lighter chestnut brown. The first example of this species, which 
appears not to have been previously known to ornithologists, 
was shot in August, 1822, in the Queen’s County, in Ireland. 
This specimen is in the Museum of the Zoological Society, in 
Bruton Street. A second example was shot on the banks of 
the Medway, near Rochester, in October, 1824, and is now in 
the collection of Mr. Dunning of Maidstone. A third speci- 
men has been lately mounted by a London bird-preserver ; 
and during the last winter, a fourth example of this species 
was shot by a nobleman upon his own estate in Hampshire. 
There is a peculiarity in the beak of all the species of the 
genus Scdlopax which deserves notice. If the upper mandible 
be macerated in water for a few days, the skin or cuticle 
may be readily peeled off, and the bones thus laid bare ex- 
hibit an ap- 
s pearance of 
which | fig. 4. 
is amagnified 
representation from the upper mandible of the common snipe 
(Scolopax Gallinago). The surface presents numerous elon- 
gated hexagonal cells, which afford at the same time protection 
and space for the expansion of minute portions of nerves 
supplied to them by two branches of the fifth pair, and the 
end of the bill becomes, in consequence of this provision, a 
delicate organ of touch to assist these birds when boring for 
their food in soft ground; this enlarged extremity of the 
5 . . . . 
beak, which it will be recollected is a generic distinction, pos- 
