THE SNIPE-BILLED GODWIT. 401 
on the outer web, and at the tips also, with white; the secon- 
daries more strongly so, and these, and the later primaries, with 
more or less of a mottled-white shaft-streak. 
The rump and upper tail-coverts white, conspicuously barred 
with black, the terminal bar more or less following the curve 
of the feather ; the tail feathers white, with regular, rather 
broad, transverse blackish brown and black bars; the central 
feathers always, the next one or two pairs often, and sometimes 
nearly the whole tail, with an ashy brown shade over the whole 
terminal portions of the feather, alike over white and black, 
both of which it obscures and dulls. 
As Swinhoe observed, but for the bill, this species closely 
resembles the Eastern Bar-tailed Godwit, Lzmosa baueri, 
Naumann, (nove-zelandie, Gray; uropygialis, Gould.), but 
this latter is a larger bird with a wing longer by a full inch and 
a quarter, and with the bills there is no mistaking this present 
species, in which the bill widens out towards the point where 
it is comparatively soft and fleshy, while in the Godwit referred 
to, itgradually narrows to the point, which is hard, polished 
and horny. 
NO OTHER species of this peculiar genus is known to exist, but 
the genus Macrorhamphus is very close to Pseudoscolopax, and 
by some considered inseparable, and one species (the only* 
known one) of that genus, the Red-breasted Snipe (7. griseus) 
inhabits the whole of North America, and Greenland, 
wandering in winter to Mexico, Central America, the West 
Indies, Brazil, and many parts of South America. 
* Some authors have divided this species into two, but the best authorities seem 
to be agreed that the second supposed species is not even entitled to rank asa variety. 
C2 
