1310 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HJSTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



yet evade the whole villanous combination, which included a pair 

 of Lugger falcons, two kites, a tawny eagle and two ruffians 

 unidentified." 



It is however a gamey little bird well worth expending one or 

 more shots on, as there is no daintier morsel of food obtainable than 

 a -Jack Snipe, generally a little ball of fat and in flavour excelling 

 any of his larger relatives. 



The Jack Snipe has been accused of being unable to swim, but 

 this is quite incorrect, for I have seen a winged Jack fall into a 

 •clear pool in a swamp, right itself at once and swim straight to the 

 edge where it promptly concealed itself in the weeds. 



The Jack Snipe breeds from the Atlantic to the Pacific through- 

 out Europe and Asia in the far North and is perhaps most 

 •common during the breeding season in Finland, where its nests 

 were first taken by Wolley. Buturlin found it numerous on the 

 Ivolyma Delta in 1905. It is reported to breed in considerable 

 inumbers throughout Russia, north of the latitude of St. Petersburg 

 and extends throughout Northern Europe to Great Britain, in 

 which country it is said to have bred or been shot in the breeding 

 -season, as far south as Yorkshire. 



During the breeding season the Jack Snipe makes a curious 

 sound whilst on the wing, but it is very doubtful whether this sound 

 lis " drumming " in the true sense of the word and the best obser- 

 vers still consider the sound a vocal one. 



Dr. Bahr thus writes about Qallinago gallinula " The Jack Snipe 

 lias 12 tail-feathers, of which the outer three are markedly shorter 

 than the three central ones. Their texture is soft and the rami 

 are easily separated, in contradistinction to those of the species we 

 have already considered. On experiment these feathers produced 

 no sound at all. 



" The structure of the outer web of the outer feathers more near- 

 ly approaches that of the inner — a marked difference to that found 

 in the other feathers we have been considering ; that is, the rami 

 •of the outer web are provided with distal and proximal rows of 

 radii and thus adhere together. The distal radii are provided with 

 4 hamuli both in the outer and inner webs." 



