DETAILED LIST OF BIRDS. 
287 
2*12; wings when closed reach to within 0*25 of end of 
tail j legs, feet, and bill, ashy with a greenish tinge. I 
may add, wing, 6*35 ; tarsus, 1*25 ; bill at front, 2*65. 
[G.J/.] 
Specimens from Japan and China though varying slightly 
in tint and proportions appear to be specifically identical.^ 
This species is fairly well figured in the Fauna Japonica, 
save only as regards the legs, which are there shown as pale 
yellow ; this they never are in the fresh bird though in the 
dried skin they do acquire a yellowish tint. The feet, es- 
pecially the soles, have a somewhat yellowish tinge although 
even in the feet (except only the soles) green is the pre- 
vailing tint, but the legs, in all the many specimens I have 
examined in the flesh, have always been a dull green, more 
or less overlaid with an albescent bloom. \_A. 0. H.'] 
880. Philomachus pugnax (Linn.). 
Ruffs and Reeves were very common in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the city of Yarkand, where also they 
undoubtedly breed. Numerous specimens obtained between 
the end of August and the beginning of September ex- 
* While concurring in this point with Prof. Schlegel, I take this 
opportunity of noticing what, so far as our Indian birds are concerned, is 
a very grave error of his in regard to a not distantly allied species, 
Mliync,h(Ea bengalensis^ Lin. {R. variegata, Viellot, apud Schlegel). He 
remarks (Mus. P. B. Scolopaces, p. 16-17), *' Teintes du plumage tres 
differentes suivant I'age mais non pas suivant le sexe." And again 
** Femelles un peu plus grandes que les males mais non pas differentes 
par les teintes." Now this may he true of the Painted Snipe, in all other 
parts of the world, but in continental India it certainly is not so. I have 
shot hundreds, and dissected dozens of these birds, and while the young of 
both sexes and the adult females are alike in the matter of the chestnut of 
the face and neck, I never obtained a single adult male with the chest- 
nut, nor a single adult female without it, and be it remembered that I 
have shot these birds repeatedly when they were breeding, dotted about 
in pairs, and with eggs or young about, and it seems to me, therefore, that 
so far as the Indian bird is concerned, I cannot possibly be mistaken. Is 
it at all probable that this species in other parts of the world differs in so 
far that there the adult female acquires the livery of the male ? I confess 
that I am sceptical on this head and believe the learned author above 
quoted to have been misled by erroneous records of sex on the tickets of 
his specimens. \_A. O. H.^ 
