THE BILL OF THE SNIPE. 
US 
the most northerly parts of the British Isles; it gene- 
rally consists of a few bits of dead grass or dry herbage, 
collected in a hollow on the ground, or at the side of a tnft 
of grass or rushes ; the eggs are four in number, of a pale 
yellowish or greenish white colour, spotted towards the 
larger end with two or three shades of brown. The nests 
are found in various situations, often in the grassy pas- 
tures, but more frequently in the unfrequented moors. It 
is thus that Grahame describes one of the selected breeding 
places of the bird : — 
Amid those woodland wilds a small round lake 
I've sometimes marked, girt by a springy sward 
Of lively green, mth here and there a flower 
Of deep-tinged purple, firmly stalked, of form 
Pyramidal — the shores bristling with reeds, 
That midway over wade, and as they bend 
Disclose the water-lily, dancing light 
On waves soft rippled by the July gale ; 
Hither the long and soft-billed Snipe resorts, 
By suction nourished ; here her house she forms ; 
Here warms her four-fold offspring into life. 
Alas ! not long her helpless offspring feel 
Her fostering warmth ; though suddenly she mounts 
Her rapid rise, her vacillating flights 
In vain defend her from the fowler's aim. 
Mudie says : — 
The bills of the Snipes are curious organs : they are soft, long, 
straight, flattened, and slender; blunt at the tip, with the upper 
mandible larger than the under, and forming a nob on its under side, 
against which the tip of the lower mandible acts. The nasal grooves 
extend nearly the whole length of the upper mandible, and the nos- 
trils are narrow longitudinal slits, covered by membranous valves. 
The bill is copiously supplied with nerves, and highly sentient ; and 
the membrane with which it is invested, and which becomes shri- 
velled after death, in the same manner as the organs of sensation in 
all animals are the first to shrink or shrivel, is probably endowed 
with more than one sense — smells the food in the soft earth, and 
feels it, after boring down ; as the birds bore down upon their prey, 
whether worm or aquatic insect, and do not dabble along, as if merely 
guided to it by touch, as many swimming birds are. The form of 
the head is also peculiar. Its profile is square, and the eyes are 
placed much further backward than those of most birds, so that they 
see better laterally than forward, and probably command nearly the 
