196 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Flight of the Common Snipe (Gallinago celestis).— Although I 
have spent a good many hours in the field study of the Common 
Snipe, I was totally unprepared for an amazing experience of this 
morning (May 2nd). On April 27th I had been timing one bird, 
and noted that it remained on the wing without a break for an 
hour and three minutes, and drummed every six seconds at the be- 
ginning of the time, slowing down to every eight seconds towards 
the close of the hour at 1.53. In each case the downward plunge 
lasted about a second and a quarter. Now, to-day, on the same field, 
in the western portion of Essex, I watched one bird mounting and 
plunging ina curious manner. ‘The rise and the fall were about equal 
in time—say, a little over a second ; during the plunge the two outer 
tail-feathers were outspread apart from their neighbours in the usual 
way, and the bird dropped at the ordinary angle, but in perfect salence. 
There was no mistake about this, and I appreciated the importance 
of the observation in its bearings upon the theory of the production 
of the drumming. In a few seconds the bird began ‘“ chipping,” and 
careering about in the manner familiar to all students of the Snipe. 
The characteristic rockings during flight were so pronounced that I 
was actually on the point of taking pencil and paper from my pocket 
to make diagrammatic notes on the spot, for I had never seen them 
at so great an angle before. Suddenly it turned and came in my 
direction at a great speed, flying at an‘altitude of some six feet above 
the ground, and calling vociferously, and as it passed me the bird 
turned completely over, and sailed along for at least twenty yards on 
outspread wings, belly wpmost ! To say that I could hardly believe 
my eyes becomes here a bald statement of fact, and not a mere figure 
of speech, and I felt that this was one of those observations on 
which one must keep silence; but during the next minute it repeated 
the manceuvre perhaps half a dozen times, against an excellent back- 
ground and in the best of lights, and my efforts to convince myself 
that I had made some mistake were fruitless. Any questions of a 
trick of light, or an optical illusion, or the possibility of the bird being 
blotched below with white, were not to be thought of, and I have 
never been so sure of an observation in my life. I repeat that in 
its abandoned play this Snipe twisted over suddenly to glide along 
back downwards—once not more than ten yards from my eyes—and 
when it mounted again in the air it plunged back downwards, although 
otherwise in the exact posture of drumming, and (as I had noted 
before) in perfect silence. This negative evidence at least seems to 
settle the office of the expanded feathers of the tail. Later on I saw 
it beating its comparatively sedate round, and drumming in the 
