THE SMIPeBILLED GOODWIN. 
2 ea aa Jerd. 
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Vernacular Names.—[None.] 
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== 2 HE Snipe-billed Godwit has been so seldom observed 
al~w within our limits that it may be well to mention 
every instance of its occurrence that has come to 
my notice. 
About the close of 1844 Jerdon procured the 
type in the Madras market. On December the 12th, 
1847, Blyth procured one in the Calcutta market. 
€olpnel McMaster writes: “I have killed it in January, (? 1863) 
near Rangoon, feeding close to the Whimbrel (Mumenius 
pheopus,) and the Stilt (Azmantopus candidus.)” 
On the 28th September (? 1876) Mr. Oates obtained two 
specimens, a male anda female, near the mouth of the Sitang in 
Lower Pegu, and on the 13th of December 1878 I purchased 
three specimens in the flesh (one male and two females) in the 
Calcutta market, which had been captured in a bird-net thirteen 
miles south-east of Calcutta. 
Besides these instances, Colonel Graham writes that he has 
shot “a few” in Eastern Assam ; but I am by no means sure 
that my kind friend has correctly identified the species. No 
one else at any rate has ever met with this species in Assam, 
but it would be extremely likely to occur there on passage. 
Outside our limits it has been procured at VPontianak in 
Borneo (two specimens by Diard), and it has occurred in China, 
but is probably rare there. I do not gather that Pére David 
himself ever met with it, but Swinhoe says he procured two 
specimens—one in partially moulted plumage, in autumn 
at Hankow, Central China, the other in full summer plumage 
from the neighbourhood of Tientsin. 
Verreaux received a specimen from Dauria, and not 
recognizing it in its rufoussummer garb, renamed it MWzcropalma 
taczanou'skia. For years Dybowski failed to meet with it in 
Darasun, and the neighbourhood of Lake Baikal; but he 
notified the existence of one specimen in the Irkutsk Museum, 
obtained somewhere in the neighbourhood, and of another at 
Warsaw which had been procured near Chita the capital (?) of 
