bird delights in basking before a fire or in the rays of the sun.

The following account of a tame snipe, which appeared in the 'The Field' some years ago, is worth quotation:

...

John Constantius Upham, Esq., of Starcross, Devon, has a common snipe which is extremely tame and familiar, and answers to the name of Jenny. In December last she was caught by some boys near the warren, and was brought to Mr. Upham in a starving state. She was recovered by forcing her to eat some very minute pieces of raw mutton. Worms having been procured, she soon commenced feeding herself, and eventually would follow Mr. Upham round the room for a worm. Her bath is a good-sized pie-dish, her salle à manger an eight-inch flower-pot, and her amusement probing a large damp sod of rushes placed for her fresh every day on a good thick piece of brown paper. . . . On our entering the parlour where she is allowed to run about, she evinced no alarm, and presently commenced feeding. The upper mandible of a snipe's bill being a little longer than the under one, it was with some perseverance and some difficulty that she picked up from the carpet a worm which was thrown to her. Except when she is very hungry, she generally washes the worms before eating them. The flower-pot is half full of earth and worms; it is placed on its side. The snipe, when she feeds, probes the earth for a worm; having caught one, she carries it to the pie-dish. After carefully washing it, she disables the worm by pinching it all over with the tip part of her bill; then she takes it by the middle and

throws it back to swallow, in doing which the head of the worm is on one side of the bill and the tail on the other. The head and tail soon disappear, and the worm goes down double, even if it be as thick as a goose-quill. The snipe constantly goes in and out of the pie-dish, and probes round at its bottom with her bill. She frequently washes herself, throwing the water over her back and flapping and splashing it with her wings, after which she comes out of the dish and preens her feathers, spreading her tail like a fan, bending it round with great flexibility in a curious manner, and keeping it in constant motion. She is very fond of the fire, and stands before it on one leg for hours together. She has on two or three occasions exhibited symptoms of impatience at confinement by flying against the window; on the last occasion she flew against the ceiling of the room with some violence, and came down much hurt, so that the feathers of one of her wings have been cut. Mr. Upham is getting a place made to collect and store worms; her consumption of them is almost incredible, for she consumes in twelve hours nearly double her own weight. Three sorts of worms she takes, the dew worm, and two other small red sorts, the names of which are unknown to me; the brandling, the lobb, the gilt-tail, or indeed any worm from a dung heap, she will not touch. She is also very fond of snail's eggs, very small young snails, woodlice, or small planorbis, and several other freshwater shells, eating shell and all; she also picks up gravel like other birds. I watched the bird for more than an hour, and saw her eat more than twenty worms. The pie-dish is a blue one, and as it was thought to be not quite deep enough for her, a larger one was searched for; but Starcross could not furnish a larger blue dish,

so a yellow one was bought, but she would not go near it; it was even banked up with turf, but it would not do, so the old blue pie-dish was brought back to her again. Mr. Upham is keeping a diary, and notes down the habits and peculiarities he observes in his pet snipe; he much fears she will not survive the ensuing summer. I was so much interested that I hope to pay the snipe another visit very soon.

A long, long controversy concerning one of the peculiarities of the snipe may now be said to have passed out of the realm of disputation, except as a matter for argument among those to whom the evidence on either side is unknown. This is the habit of drumming: the controversy was as to whether the drumming, or bleating, sound came from the bird's vocal organs or whether it was produced by other means.

I do not think anyone hearing a drumming snipe for the first time and being unfamiliar with what has been said upon the subject would ever for a moment doubt that the sound came from the bird's throat. It is quite a throat sound, a sound so closely resembling the bleating of a lamb or a goat that perhaps an untrained ear could detect no difference at all. It was the similarity between the drumming of the snipe and the bleating of a goat or a lamb that won for the bird its British name of 'heather-bleater' and its French

name of 'flying nanny-goat.' The goat and the lamb emitting from their throats a sound so nearly like the drumming of the snipe that anyone may be forgiven for mistaking the one for the other, it is but natural that people should have maintained through thick and thin that the snipe's drumming comes from the snipe's throat. Everything but one lends strength to the belief.

This one thing is, that the snipe never drums save when plunging head foremost towards the earth: no snipe has ever been heard to drum while resting on the ground, no snipe has ever been heard to drum while flying upwards or parallel with the earth's surface. The bird when flying at a greater or less height suddenly swoops obliquely, and as long as the swoop lasts the sound of the drumming is given forth. This at length led to the supposition that the sound was created by the wings and not by the throat, a supposition which was widely contested and denied, the chief arguments against it being that a sound of such a kind could never be produced by the wing vibrations of a bird, and that if it could be so produced, no bird of anything like the small size of a snipe could generate a wing sound of such volume as the snipe's drumming.

At a time when the vexed question was as far as

ever from settlement, the Rev. J. G. Wood (to the best of my knowledge the first to record such synchronisation of sounds), wrote:

How this sound is produced has long been a controversy, but I am convinced that it is produced by the wings at all events that it is not from the mouth. During a recent stay in the New Forest, I set myself to the elucidation of this problem, and in company with two friends went towards sunset to an excellent cover near a large marsh, in which snipes were almost as plentiful as sparrows. From this post we could watch the snipes to great advantage, and the birds would come circling over our heads, piping and drumming vigorously. On several occasions when a snipe was passing over us at so low an elevation that his long drooping beak was distinctly visible, he stooped directly over our heads and uttered his 'chic-a, chic-a!' simultaneously with the drumming, both sounds being distinctly heard at the same time.

Anyone wishing to assure himself by personal observation that the snipe utters its cry at the same time that it drums can do so, but he should know that the simultaneous occurrence of the two sounds is very far from common: one may have to watch birds for days before hearing it.

It being certain that the drumming is not produced by the snipe's vocal organs, the question is: How does the bird produce it? Before entering