to earth—that the sound strikes the ear. A second bird flies, to my surprise and interest, quite differently. After scudding about for some little time in a devious side-to-side pathway, less up and down, as it seems to me, than the other, it suddenly tilts itself sideways, or almost sideways—one wing pointing skywards, the other earthwards—and makes a rapid swoop down, with the wings not beating. I watch it doing this time after time, both with the naked eye and through the glasses, and each time that the swoop is made no bleating or other sound accompanies it: the flight is noiseless, like that of an ordinary bird. Two other snipes are now flying about in this latter way and chasing each other. At first—and this included a great many sweeps down—I heard no sound. Afterwards I thought I heard it faintly sometimes, but could not be sure that it was not made by another bird—a frequent difficulty in watching snipe." Again, "A snipe is standing alone 'in the melancholy marshes,' quite still, and uttering the creaky, sea-sawey note. I can see the two long mandibles of the beak dividing slightly and again closing. The note is now thin and subdued, but, the bird taking flight suddenly, it becomes much accentuated. It joins two other birds in the air, and all three now sport and pursue each other about, constantly uttering this cry, but bleating only occasionally. I am lying flat on the ground, and they often fly close about and over me, the light, too, being good, it being all before 5.40, and not much after 5, perhaps, when it commenced (this was April 4th). I note that they often descend through the air without vibrating the wings, and there is
