THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 911 



Buturlin writing to Dr. P. H. Balir on the " drumming " of the 

 -Jack Snipe says : — " I heard it every day in the summer of 1905, 

 when on the Kolyma. The bird usually flies so high that even 

 with the aid of the midnight sun and good Zeiss binocular it is- 

 often quite invisible, nevertheless the sound ' top-toppy, top- 

 toppy ' is quite clearly heard. " 



Wolley's description of the breeding of this little Snipe still 

 remains the best and the most interesting and is therefore quoted 

 in exienso. He writes : "I scarcely like to tell you about the 

 Jack Snipe ; anything I can say must be so poor an expression of 

 my real exultation at the finding of this long-wished-for egg. It 

 was on the 17th of June 1858, in the great marsh at Muonioniska 

 that I first heard the Jack Snipe, though at the time I could not 

 at all guess what it was. An extraordinary sound unlike any- 

 thing I had heard before. I could not tell from what direction it 

 •came, and it filled me with a curious surprise. My Finnish inter- 

 preter (Theodore) thought it was a Capercally, and at that time 

 I could not contradict him ; but soon I found that it was a small 

 bird gliding at a wild pace at great height over the marsh. I 

 know not how better to describe the noise than by likening it to 

 the cantering of a horse in the distance over a hard hollow road : 

 it came in fours, with a similar cadence and a like clean yet 

 hollow sound. The same day we found a nest which seemed to be 

 ■of a kind unknown to me. The next morning I went to Kharto- 

 uoma with a good strength of beaters. I kept them as well as I 

 could in line, myself in the middle, my Swedish travelling com- 

 panion (Herr Salomon) on one side and the Finn talker on the 

 other. Whenever a bird was put off its nest the man who saw it 

 was to pass on the word, and the whole line was to stand whilst I 

 went to examine the eggs, and take them at once, or observe the 

 bearings of the spot for another visit, as might be necessary. We 

 had not been many hours in the marsh when I saw a bird get up 

 before Herr Salomon, and I marked it down. In the meantime 

 the nest was found, and when I came up the owner was declared 

 to have appeared striped on the back and not white over the tail. 

 A sight of the eggs as they lay raised my expectations to the 



