Ornithological Notes, by Valentine Knight, Esq. 261 



roughly handled in the partial skinning which it got, and con- 

 sequently rather injured — the legs varnished, &c. I took some 

 measurements, such as length of bill, 2-| in., tarsus If in., but 

 these, I take it, have little value in determining the species, con- 

 sidering the size, weight, &c, of the Common Snipe vary so much. 

 I forwarded the bird to Mr Charles Gordon, curator of the Dover 

 Museum, for re-preservation, and he found that considerable 

 portions of the bird had not been removed, such as the whole of 

 the back-bone, the neck, all the flesh of the wings, &c. He care- 

 fully counted the tail feathers, and found fourteen, as in the 

 Common Snipe; however, on referring to the " Birds of Norfolk, " 

 by Mr Stevenson, I find that many specimens of the Scolopax 

 Sabini have been found with the same number. Mr Morris does 

 not state from what specimen his figure of the Sabine was taken, 

 but it gives one the idea of a paler bird than Yigors's specimen, 

 figured by Yarrell, Bewick, and others. The bird I am now de- 

 scribing has a very remarkable resemblance to Morris's bird, 

 with the exception of a little very dirty white — if I can call it 

 white — between the legs, the thigh feathers down to the leg being 

 mottled brown, like Morris's specimen. Now, in the Common 

 Snipe, and in all waders with light underparts, the plumage gets 

 purer white as it approaches and ends at the legs. Taking the 

 colour of this bird as a whole, and comparing it alongside a 

 Woodcock, it is the darker of the two, the breast being rather 

 spotted, while that of the Woodcock is barred. I may add that 

 soon after obtaining it, I let Mr Hancock see it, and he told me 

 that he considered it "a very red variety of the Common Snipe, 

 that he had never seen one so red, and nearly approaching to 

 Sabine;" and added, "but then I consider Sabine's Snipe 

 nothing more than a variety of the Common Snipe." No doubt, 

 along with Mr Hancock, many ornithologists of the present day 

 consider Sabine's nothing more than a melanoid variety of 8. 

 Gallinago ; and on this point Mr Stevenson says, " although this 

 opinion unquestionably gains ground, — I consider that with some 

 future Selby or Yarrell must rest the responsibility of removing 

 it from the ' list ' of British Birds." Mr Gray, in his " Birds of 

 the West of Scotland," mentions a bird that came under his 

 notice at Inverness, in February, 1869, and which he calls the 

 Russet Snipe, S. russata ; I have never seen this bird figured, or in 

 collections, but rather fancy it is larger than either the Gallinago 



