356 
SCOLOPACIDAS. 
death deprived me of that information which he was 
always ready to communicate. 
The egg figured in the last edition was one of Mr. Hoy’s; 
and now that this drawing may be compared with the 
eggs brought home by Mr. Wolley, I have no doubt of its 
authenticity. 
Few can understand, or have ever had the happiness to 
feel, that enthusiasm, that intense love for the beautiful 
works of Nature’s God which have accompanied Mr. Wol- 
ley in his solitary rambles, and have rewarded him when, 
after weeks of toil, he has discovered an unknown egg; 
such feelings are expressed in the following account, for 
which he deserves all our thanks:—“I scarcely like to 
tell you about the Jack-Snipe, anything I can say must 
be so poor an expression of my exultation at the finding 
of this long wished-for egg. It was on the 17th of June, 
1853, in the great marsh of Muonioniska, that I first 
heard the Jack-Snipe, though at the time I could not at 
all guess what it was; an extraordinary sound, unlike 
anything I had heard before, I could not tell from what 
direction it came, and it filled me with a curious surprise; 
my Finnish interpreter thought it was a capercally, and 
at that time I could not contradict him, but soon I found 
that it was a small bird gliding at a wild pace at a great 
height over the marsh. I know not how better to des¬ 
cribe the noise than by likening it to the cantering of a 
horse in the distance, over a hard, hollow road; it came 
in fours with a similar cadence, and a like clear yet hol¬ 
low sound. The same day we found a nest which seemed 
to be of a kind unknown to me. The next morning I 
went to Kharto Uoma with a good strength of beaters. I 
kept them, as well as I could, in a line,—myself in the 
middle, my Swedish travelling companion on one side, 
and the Finn talker on the other. Whenever a bird was 
