374 THE JACK SNIPE. 
and as a fact Radde once saw it near Lake IItschir in the 
Sajan Mountains. None of our explorers observed it any- 
where in Eastern Turkestan (Yarkand), and in Western Turkes- 
tan it is only seen on passage. On the other hand, in Afghanis- 
tan and Beluchistan and throughout Persia, it is in winter, 
in proportion to the Common Snipe, quite as common as, or per- 
haps even commoner than, it is in India, and we might conclude 
that the migration was a south-easterly and north-westerly 
one, and that birds reached us from the west and from thence 
spread over the Empire, were it not that they reach the val- 
ley of Nepal, and even the neighbourhood of Calcutta earlier 
than they reach Jacobabad. We might conclude that the 
birds breeding in Northern Siberia, west of the 1ooth parallel 
of E. Latitude, (east of which it scarcely seems to extend) came 
down nearly due north and south almost without halting some 
2,500 miles to India, much as the Great Snipe of Europe 
(G. major) is supposed to traverse the entire Continent of Africa 
from north to south; but looking to the comparatively feeble 
flight of this species, this seems unlikely, and the probability is, 
that the non-record of the Jack Snipe in Eastern Turkestan 
is due partly to the very imperfect manner in which our 
officers have, as yet, been able to work that vast tract, and 
partly to the birds passing through the country rapidly, and 
that hereafter it will prove to occur not only there, but at 
all suitable places in Central Asia on passage to and from 
India, though it may not usually get quite so far east as the 
Koko Nor. 
Further it occurs in Asia Minor, Palestine, Northern Africa 
along the Mediterranean, and the whole of Europe (but not 
extending to any of the Atlantic Islands, the Feroes, or Ice- 
land), being a winter visitant to the greater portion of this 
whole region, and summering and breeding for the most part 
only north of the 60° N. Latitude (to far within the Arctic Circle, 
where indeed it seems most common), but in Central Russia, 
and possibly in Denmark as far south as the 55th degree. 
THE JACK SNIPE is very variable, according to my experience 
in the North-West Provinces, in its migrations, appearing much 
earlier in some years,and being much more plentiful in some 
than in others; but even when most abundant, it is nowhere, 
in any part of the Empire that I have visited, or from whence 
I have received accounts, at all common as compared 
with Fantails or Pintails, within the regular ranges of either 
of these; and, moreover, the bird lies so close and is so easily over- 
looked, that it is by no means surprising if accounts as to 
the times of its arrival and departure differ widely* ; and I must 
* In the North-Western Provinces, the earliest date on which I have ever shot 
it has been the 9th of September. In most years I have seen the first birds just at 
the close of September or the very commencement of October. In one year I noted 
