THE ZooLocist—NovemsB ER, 1876. 5143 
“Sabine’s Snipe” (Scolopax Sabini), and which has afforded no 
ordinary amount of interest to naturalists from its doubtful claim 
to specific value. Some half-a-dozen Specimens only have been 
obtained,* and those at a comparatively recent period,t and, what is 
singular, all these examples have occurred in the British Isles, the 
bird being entirely unknown as indigenous in other countries, and 
there is no record by ornithological authors of its ever having 
been seen, except in our own islands, in the New or Old World. ¢ 
Cornwall claims to have afforded two of these specimens, the last 
of which was obtained from the neighbourhood of Penzance, shot 
by Mr. J. Dennis, jun., and the particulars duly recorded in the 
*Zoologist’ in the month of February last. 
Up to a very recent period Sabine’s snipe was recognised 
and described in all our works on British birds as specifically 
distinct from the other snipes. One of its principal distinguishing 
characters, and the one most relied on, is in the number of its tail- 
feathers being twelve instead of fourteen, the last being the normal 
number of the tail-feathers of the common snipe, and sixteen that 
of the great or solitary snipe. Another character in this bird 
quite at variance with the other snipes is the entire absence of the 
longitudinal buff lines which we always see in the dorsal plumage 
of the great, common and jack snipes. 
In spite of these two marked characters, there has been a 
very strong leaning of late by our scientific naturalists to regard 
this bird as a mere melanism of the common snipe and not a 
distinct species. Mr. Gould is a convert to this opinion, for in 
his ‘Birds of Europe’ he gives a figure of the bird as a distinct 
species, but in his last work, the ‘ Birds of Great Britain,’ he has 
omitted to figure the bird or to regard it as specifically distinct. 
Now, in support of this newly-adopted opinion as to its being only 
a variety and not a distinct species, it is no less interesting than 
true that the two Cornish specimens—the one killed at Carnanton 
and the other near Penzance—had each fourteen tail-feathers, the 
normal number, as before mentioned, of our common snipe’s tail: 
of this fact I am certain, as I counted them distinctly more than 
* A list of twenty-five will be found in ‘ The Field’ of December 10th, 1870, since 
which date several others have been obtained and recorded.—Ep. 
+ The type specimen described by Mr. Vigors was shot in August, 1822.—Ep. 
t A specimen in the foreign collection of the British Museum was shot near Paris 
by a friend of the late M. Jules Verreaux.—Eb. 
