THE TRUE SNIPES. 
217 
found in the Mediterranean and North Africa, extending to t e 
Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands and Senegambia, as well 
as the Nile Valley, and as far as Aden. 
Habits.— The Snipe is a bird which is seldom seen in the day 
unless flushed from its marshy lair, and I only once remember 
having seen one flying of its own accord m full daylight. Ott the 
beach at Gorleston, near Yarmouth, I was wandering one morn- 
ing in September, 1885, with a gun under my arm ui case any 
bird came along which 1 might want for the British Museum, 
when I saw a cluster of small birds, apparently Dunlins or Stmts, 
flying over the sea at a short distance from the shore. As they 
came nearer, I could make out a larger bird flying in front, and 
evidently acting as leader to the smaller fry, of which there 
were, perhaps, a dozen. As they passed by me at a consider- 
able distance I aimed at the foremost bird, which was about a 
yard or two in front of the others, thinking that it must be a 
Knot, hly shot told, and the poor bird left his followers to shift 
for themselves, and turned shorewards, falling on a grassy cliH. 
When I had ascended the latter I was considerably astonished 
to find that my victim was a Common Snipe, which had been 
acting as guide, philosopher, and friend to a party of unsophis- 
ticated Dunlins at noonday. u ..n 
Pairs of Snipe, travelling in company, have been observed 
crossing the sea on migration, but, as a rule, the bird is found 
alone thouoh a goodly company may be in close proximity. 
0?.“: "o S'oub., ?he .he we., ot London ebounded 
with Snipe, and close to what is now Bedford Park I have my- 
self seen a Snipe shot within the last ten years, some day to be 
reckoned as great a man'cl as the Ring-Ouzels from Turnham 
Green and the Nightingale from the country round Bayswater, 
of which birds specimens are in the British Museum In the 
water-meadows and common-lands of the Thames Valley, eft 
moist after the floods, I have known plenty of Snipe to be killed 
quite close to London, and the way in which they will cling to a 
locality day after day, after having been constantly shot at, is 
as surprising as the way in which they will suddenly disappar 
from a place in which they have been plentiful the day before, 
without any apparent reason. Every sportsman knows how, in 
a favourite spot in the water-meadows, Snipe are almost sure to 
be found in favourable weather, and how, without being actu- 
