48. 
GODWIT SNIPE: Chass. I, 
These birds are taken in the fens, in the same 
season, and in the same manner, with the Ruffs: 
and Reeves, and when fattened are esteemed a 
great delicacy, and sell for half-a-crown, or five 
shillings, a piece. A.stale of the same species is 
placed in the net. They appear in small flocks 
on. our coast in September, and continue with 
us the whole winter; they walk on the open 
sands like the curlew, and feed on insects. 
M. Brisson has figured this bird very accu- 
rately, but has given it the synonym of our 
Greenshanks. Turner suspects this bird to have 
been the attagen or attagas of the antients. 
Aristophanes names it in an address to the birds 
that inhabit the fens; therefore some commen- 
tators conclude it to be a water fowl; though 
in a line or two after he speaks of those that 
frequent the beautiful meadows of Marathon. 
He then describes the bird in very striking terms, 
under the title of the attagas, the bird with 
painted wings ; and in another place he styles 
it the spotted attagas*. ‘This alone would be 
insufficient to prove what species the poet in- 
tended; we must therefore have recourse to 
*"Oons re nregomolmros 
arrayas. 
Arrayas ouros Tae NMbY WoIKiAos nEKAjoeral. 
Av. 249, 762. 
