8 



not done designedly. Bechstein certainly states that it will occasionally eat blueberries ; this 

 would appear to be incorrect. When feeding it probes the mud by thrusting its bill in quite up 

 to the base and withdrawing it quickly; and the bill, which when the bird is alive has the 

 terminal portion soft and pulpy, is evidently designed to assist the bird in feeling, as it were, for 

 its food. Soon after death, however, its bill becomes pitted or dimpled like the end of a 

 thimble. 



The Snipe commences nidification early ; and eggs may be found from the first week in 

 April, though, as a rule, the first eggs are laid about the middle of that month. Towards the 

 third week of March the pairing-season commences ; and then the strange drumming or bleating 

 note indicative of the breeding-season may be heard. This peculiar note is always emitted when 

 the bird is on the wing ; and from its resemblance to the bleating of a goat or the neighing of a 

 horse the bird has in France obtained the name of " Chevre volant," in Sweden " Horsgok," in 

 Denmark "Hingstefugl," and in Germany "Himmelsgeiss" (hence the name given it by Frenzel) 

 and " Haberbock " amongst the peasantry. It was long a disputed point as to how this sound is 

 produced; but it appears to be now tolerably certain that the sound proceeds from the 

 external tail-feathers. Mr. Meves, who found out that this sound is generated by the action 

 of the air on these stiff feathers as the bird descends rapidly when going through its course of 

 aerial evolutions, showed me exactly how he made the discovery ; and the apparatus he had 

 constructed gave the sound with striking fidelity. An excellent translation of Mr. Meves's remarks 

 on the subject was published by the late Mr. John Wolley (P. Z. S. 1858, p. 199), which I transcribe 

 as follows : — " On the origin of the neighing sound which accompanies the single Snipe's (Scolopax 

 gallinago, L.) play — flight during pairing-time — opinions are various. Bechstein thought that it 

 was produced by means of the beak ; Naumann and others, again, that it originated in powerful 

 strokes of the wing; but since Pralle in Hanover observed that the bird makes heard its well- 

 known song or cry, which he expresses with the words ' gick jack, gick jack !' at the same time 

 with the neighing sound, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not produced through the 

 throat. In the mean time I have remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never 

 be observed whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed, but only when 

 it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction with the tail strongly spread out. 



" The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign species nearly allied to our Snipe 

 (for example, S. javensis) encouraged the notion that the tail, if not alone, at all events in a 

 considerable degree, conduced to the production of the sound. On a closer examination of the 

 tail-feathers of our common species, I found the first (outer) feather, especially, very peculiarly 

 constructed : — the shaft uncommonly stiff, sabre-shaped ; the rays of the web strongly bound 

 together and very long, the longest reaching nearly three fourths of the whole length of the 

 web, these rays lying along (or spanning from end to end of the curve of) the shaft, like the 

 strings of a musical instrument. If one blows from the outer side upon the broad web it comes 

 into vibration, and a sound is heard which, though fainter, resembles very closely the well- 

 known neighing. 



" But to convince one's self fully that it is the first feather which produces the peculiar 

 sound, it is only necessary carefully to pluck out such a one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread 

 to a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter and a foot long, and then to fix this at 



