98 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
Knots which breed in Northern Europe only travel 
as far south as Southern Europe in winter, more 
reasonable to suppose that our variety of the Knot 
does not make such a huge journey as to the extreme 
north of Asia, but breeds somewhere in the Northern 
Chinese uplands, a district which when w^ell explored 
will, I think, be found to contain the solutions of a 
number of problems in Australian ornithology. 
SNIPE 
Ditelmatias hardwickii 
The Australian Snipe nests in Japan — this is one of 
the few facts which may be stated with certainty 
about the breeding of any of our Asiatic bird visitors — 
where eggs have been found on the grassy moorlands 
at the foot of the volcano Fujiyama which figures 
so largely in Japanese art. Conversely it may be 
stated with equal authority that our Snipe does not 
breed in Australia, in spite of the fact that there are 
few old inhabitants of Snipe-haunted districts who 
will not be willing to argue, or even wager, that 
they have known of authentic Snipes' nests. Most 
of these cases, when investigated, have proved to refer 
to the Painted Snipe, a distinct and resident species, 
or to the Collared Plain Wanderer, whose eggs have 
something of the Snipe character. 
At the end of the northern summer the birds, 
impelled by the vague and little-understood stimulus 
