904 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



To this we must now add a few other places. Osmaston records 

 it as having been shot by Oapt. Turner in 1896 at Port Blair in 

 the Andamans. I have received specimens from the Shan States, 

 and others again from the Federated Malay States. Specimens 

 have also been received by the British Museum from Taiwan 

 (Formosa), Yokohama and Hakodadi. 



As Hume says, its distribution in the non-breeding season is 

 very perplexing and the thirty years which have passed since he- 

 wrote this have added very little to our knowledge as to its Winter 

 haunts. It breeds, as has already been said, practically right 

 across Northern Asia and Europe but whilst in Winter it is 

 recorded as comparatively common all through Northern Africa 

 and through Asia as far East as Bengal, eastward of this it 

 becomes rare in Burmah and almost unknown in China. It may 

 be that its alleged extreme rarity in China is partly due to the 

 fact that sportsmen are not scattered throughout its whole length 

 and breadth as they are in India and so we have not the same 

 number of sporting records. This is not, however, a satisfactory 

 explanation as there are several European settlements, all with 

 their quota of sportsmen and field naturalists who would almost 

 certainly have come across and shot Jack Snipe had they been 

 there to shoot. Again paucity of sportsmen and naturalists is no 

 reason for the few records of Jack Snipe obtained from Burmah 

 and there can be no doubt that East of the Bay of Bengal the 

 Jack Snipe at once becomes very much more uncommon than it is 

 to the immediate West of it. The only record I can find which 

 shews this bird to be anything but rare East of Bengal is made 

 by Oates in his " Game Birds, " p. 479, where he remarks : — " In 

 Upper Burmah where the Jack is fairly common, six may occa- 

 sionally be bagged in one day. Hume suggested that all our birds 

 were possibly Western migrants, but as he himself added, this is 

 hardly possible as the birds arrive in Eastern India earlier than they 

 do in the West. It seems probable, therefore, that the migration of 

 the Jack Snipe when leaving their breeding haunts is Western 

 and South-Western and on the return journey Eastern and North- 

 Eastern We have already shewn that the trend of migration of 



