MAB8H SANDPIPER. 11 



■winter, tlie under surface during the latter season being uniformly 

 pure white. Its dimensions are: Bill, 1.75 inches; "wing, from carpus, 

 5.75; bare portion of tibia, 1.1; tarsus, 2; and middle toe, with 

 claw, 1.2. Like all members of the genus Totanus, it has a small 

 web between the middle and outer toe of each foot; in this respect 

 differing from the species of the genus Tringa, in which all the toes 

 are cleft to the base. The bill, too, is hard and horny at the tip, 

 instead of being, as in the Tringidce, soft and sensitive. 



'^The home of the Marsh Sandpiper appears without doubt to be 

 in South-eastern Europe and Southern Siberia, and it is found but 

 rarely on the western side of the continent. In the marshes of the 

 Black Sea it is particularly common in spring, at which season 

 numerous flocks are met with all over Sortth Russia, and many are 

 killed there for sale in the Odessa market. Professor Nordmann 

 thinks that it nests there, for he ascertained that it was found in 

 the middle of May in Bessarabia and in the province of Kherson. 

 In Turkey and Asia Minor it is equally common, numbers being 

 killed there for food during the autumn migration. During the 

 months of March, April, and part of May it is found in Greece in 

 large flocks, at which season also Lord Lilford noted it as abundant 

 in Corfu. In Malta it appears annually in spring and autumn, and 

 according to Malherbe (^Faune de la Sicile') the lakes of Phare near 

 Messina constitute a regular halting place for this species on its way 

 northward into Italy in the month of April. The vast marsh country 

 of Hungary appears to offer special attractions to this species, for 

 numbers appear to make this the northernmost point of their journey 

 in spring, and remain here to breed. Naumann specifies the 

 Neusiedler Lake and Upper Silesia as breeding quarters; and Dr. 

 Baldamus, who met with it in Central and Northern Hungary in 

 the middle of June, states that a friend of his, by name Pelenyi 

 (who has published some excellent observations on this species in his 

 account of Hungarian birds), discovered many nests with eggs there. 

 Dr. Baldamus himself found similar eggs in the "White Morass, 

 which could only have belonged to this species. The curator of the 

 Pesth Museum assured Mr. Dresser that the Marsh Sandpiper 

 breeds not unfrequently in some parts of Hungary, and showed him 

 a series of eggs taken in that country, with one of which he pre- 

 sented him. These eggs resemble in miniature the eggs of the 

 Common Redshank, Totanus calidris. 



^'In Germany the Marsh Sandpiper is only an occasional visitant; 

 in fact, after leaving Italy on the west, and Hungary on the north, 

 the further westward and northward we proceed the rarer it becomes; 



