NOTICE 
OF SOME 
NEW OR RARE BIRDS WHICH HAVE OCCURRED 
IN THE 
BRITISH ISLANDS IN 1849. 
SCOLOPAX BREHMI, Kaup. 
The number of the feathers composing the tail of birds has been 
by most ornithologists considered of sufficient importance to form a 
specific distinction, where the species were otherwise nearly allied. 
This was the case in the genera Scolopciw and Phalacracoraoc. In 
the Snipes it was one of the first characters almost that were exa- 
mined ; but some ornithologists of great experience appear to con- 
sider number as of no specific consequence. Temminck states, that 
the common snipe possesses fourteen tail-feathers in its normal 
state, but that birds which have sixteen or twelve feathers, and 
otherwise, are very similar in plumage, are only abnormal variations 
from the ordinary or normal form ; and from this opinion he makes 
the S. brehmi of Kaup, with sixteen tail-feathers, and the S. pere- 
grina of Brehm, with twelve feathers, as only abnormal or occa- 
sional variations from S. gallinago. In like manner he carries out 
this theory with the cormorants. Of the P. cormoranus or carbo 
he writes : “Be nombre des pennes caudales n’est pas un indice 
pouvant servir de charactere distinctif de l’espece ; leur nombre, a 
J’etat normal, est a la verite de 14, mais nous avons vu des in- 
dividiis ayant seulment 12 pennes, et plus rarement portant 16 rec- 
trices 
Mon. Schlegel, in his “ Revue critique,” considers, that in the 
Snipes, described as S. gallinago and brehmi, “ Le nombre et la 
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