354 THE” PINDTAIL] SNIPE: 
or in wisps, each one, as it alighted, uttering its characteristic 
cry. The birds remained all night, but dispersed as soon as the 
morning gun was fired from the fort at 5 A.M., when it was still 
quite dark. Their other nightly resort was a small bit of 
ground, also on the hill, that had been recently cleared of 
brushwood to make a garden. This place, situated at the foot 
of a small rise, was rather marshy. All the Snipe in the 
neighbourhood flocked to these two places at night, the former, 
where I should say several hundred Snipe congregated every 
evening, being the most frequented. But although I frequently 
went after them, yet, on the whole, I was not successful, owing 
to the difficulty of seeing the birds well enough to make sure 
of them, when flushed or even when first alighting. I found 
that the only plan was to go some little way down the slope 
of the hill and take my chance of a bird or birds passing 
immediately over head. No doubt when the birds first began 
to arrive there was generally light enough to see them, though 
indistinctly ; but within a quarter of an hour (Klang is not a 
hundred miles from the equator) it becomes too dark to see to 
shoot.” 
OF THE nidification of the Pintail Snipe absolutely nothing 
certain is known, though Hodgson records that in females, ob- 
tained by him on the 4th of May, the eggs were still small. No 
doubt some few birds do remain all the year in the Andamans, 
the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and other hilly tracts; but 
whether birds thus remaining breed there, is as yet uncertain. 
Possibly this bird does not breed until the second year, and these 
birds and the late stayers generally may be birds of the year. 
Even, however, if some do breed here, the great majority doubt- 
less breed elsewhere, and it has been supposed that they breed 
in South-Eastern Siberia; but Dybowski, who gives a full 
account of the breeding of G. megala (heterocerca, Cab., apud 
Cabanis, Aodze*) in Darasun, leads us to infer that this species 
breeds further north, as he says, “not uncommon oz passage, 
arrives in the spring early in May, remains in autumn till 
October.” 7 
* Or at any rate of J. F. O., 1873, 104. I personally cannot help suspecting that 
the specimen originally described as heterocerca (J. F. O., 1870, 235) was merely 
sthenura, and that Cabanis’ Zeteroearca, from Luzon (J. F. O., 1872, 317) was megala. 
According to the passage first referred to, however, Aeferocerca is affirmed by Cabanis 
to be equivalent to the species we English now call megala. 
As to megala, Cabanis believes that Swinhoe really first applied this name to 
specimens of so/z¢arza (a bird Swinhoe never obtained, unless a bird he sent to Blyth, 
and which was lost, belonged to this species), and that the name mega/a was later 
wrongly transferred to his heferocerca. This hypothesis is absolutely untenable since 
Swinhoe ad no specimens of softavia, to which to apply the name, until several 
years later when he got one or more (he sent me one of each) from Pekin and Japan, 
and his name megala was applied to the Common Great Snipe of China, of which he 
had numbers of specimens, and which is unquestionably the bird we now call mega/a. 
But I have discussed this question more fully in the out-coming November 1880 
number of Stray Feathers, to which I must refer any chance reader who may care 
to investigate further this barren question of nomenclature. 
