32 MR. p. H. BAHR ON THE [Jail. 15, 



rows of distal and proximal radii, the former being provided with 

 4 hamuli in the same manner as the inner web. Herein this 

 o-roup difiers notably from any of the preceding ; the rami are 

 short and stont, proximal and distal rows of radii the same size. 



The bleat produced by these feathers is very loud, and consists 

 of a number of notes of different pitch intermingled, caused 

 apparently by the difference in breadth of the different musical 

 feathers in the tail. 



I venture to think that in this group the bleat is produced by 

 the vibration of the feather as a whole, not by the inner web 

 alone as in G. coelestis. 



An account of its breeding-habits is to be found in Hume and 

 Marshall's ' Game Birds of India' : — " They are to be heard and 

 seen in the higher portion of the hills, soaring to a considerable 

 height, repeatedly uttering a loud sharp, jerky call, and then 

 descending rapidly with quivering wings and outspread tail, pro- 

 ducing a hard buzzing sound, something like, but shriller and 

 louder than, that produced by G. ccelesiis, though they do not 

 descend as rapidly as the latter.'" 



Gallinago megala. — This species inhabits S.E. Siberia from 

 Lake Baikal to the North Island of Japan. It possesses 20 tail- 

 feathers, of which the outermost are | inch in diameter. The 

 attenuated feathers are shorter than those from the middle of 

 the tail (text-fig. 9, h). Microscopically they resemble those of 

 G. solitaria in every way. The bleat they produce also resembles 

 that of the foregoing species, but is far higher in tone. An 

 account of its breeding-habits is to be found in Taczanowski's 

 ' Fauna ornithologique de la Siberie orientale,' p. 958, a refer- 

 ence kindly given me by Prof. Newton. I have translated the 

 passage from the French : quoting from Prjevalski he says : — 

 " That it retires to breed in the deepest marshes, covered with 

 black scrub, and performs aerial evolutions as follows. The male 

 soars up in the same way as our Snipe does, ami after having 

 described large circles in its flight above the place in which the 

 female is nesting, it darts downwards in an oblique direction, 

 making (probably with the rectrices, as does our Snipe) a loud 

 sound, like the noise produced by a racquet when the handle has 

 been broken. This noise gains more and more in intensity as it 

 approaches the ground, and ceases about 100 paces from it, and 

 then the bird continues its flight, repeating a note, which one can 

 express by tic-tic-tic." 



I have received a tail of this species from Central Siberia from 

 Mr. Buturlin, who sends me this account from his first part of 

 the ' Limicolfe of Russia' (1902, pp. 77-78), an account contributed 

 by the late M. SchAvedow :—" After 6 o'clock p.m. (in May, near 

 Irkutsk) one can see in the woods or on forest-swamps the ' foi-est 

 Snipes ' wheeling round and round in the air, and nearly always 

 repeating in rapid succession notes like 'chwu, chwi, chwi,' or 

 ' zswee zwee, zwee.' From time to time one or other of the birds 

 stops beating its wings, somewhat partially closes them, and 

 swoops obliquely down, while vibrating notes are heard in the 



