OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 309 



maintain that the vibration of the wings is responsible for its 

 production ; whilst others yet again hold that it is caused by the 

 rush of air through the outspread tail. The vocal organs must 

 be dismissed, because the Snipe has been heard to utter its love 

 notes whilst drumming, although this is exceptional. I am in- 

 clined to adopt Colonel Legge's explanation, based as it was on 

 much careful observation and experiment, which he minutely 

 described to me some years ago, and that is, the drumming is 

 produced by the combined action of the wings and tail. He 

 informed me (as he also published in his magnificent work on the 

 Birds of Ceylon) that the vibrations of sound were exactly 

 coincident with the beats of the wings, and that the air-waves are 

 driven by the powerful wing-beats through the expanded and 

 rigid tail feathers. The nest of the Common Snipe is usually 

 placed in the centre or under the side of a tuft or tussock of 

 coarse grass and rush in the swamps. It is merely a slight 

 depression lined with dry grass and bits of dead aquatic herbage. 

 The eggs are four in number, and vary from buff of different 

 shades to olive of different shades in ground colour, heavily and 

 handsomely blotched and spotted with rich dark brown, occasion- 

 ally streaked with blackish brown, and with numerous large 

 underlying markings of pale brown and gray. They are pyriform, 

 and measure on an average i'6 inch in length by I'l inch in 

 breadth. Incubation, principally performed by the female, lasts 

 from sixteen to twenty days. But one brood is reared in the year. 

 Diagnostic Characters. — Scolopax, with fourteen rectrices, 

 with dark streaks (not bars) on the breast, and with the axillaries 

 white, more or less marked with dark gray. Length, loj^ inches. 

 Albinos and fawn-coloured varieties are not uncommonly met 

 with, especially in India. 



