uttering the notes with a peculiar prolonged and quivering whistle. The nest is always placed a short way from the water, on some dry bank, among straggling willows, or in a pasture or grass field; it is made in a hollow with a little of the surrounding herbage collected, and is generally protected on one side by some slight elevation or tuft; when openly approached, we have always seen the female go off her nest as quietly as possible, and without any demonstration of alarm, sometimes running before rising, as if wishing to prevent the detection of the spot. When with the young, both the birds are clamorous, but never to the same extent as those we have been describing. When the young are hatched, the broods continue together, and may be found in these small companies, on the sea shores, after they have left their inland breeding quarters. Its habits, in England, so far as we know and have seen, are similar, but it seems to prefer a subalpine district for its breeding stations, and is perhaps more frequent in the lower lying and flatter districts of the south, after its nidification has been performed. It is met with in similar stations in Ireland in abundance. Although extending to the northernmost parts of the mainland of Scotland, it does not appear to visit the islands; at the same time, it is recorded as ranging northward to Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands.* Southward, we find it in India,† the East India + Colonel Sykes.

* Yarrell.

1

Islands, Japan, and Java.† Mr. Jerdan states it to be "found solitary in similar situations with the last (T. ochropus), but not nearly so common." We possess specimens from Southern Africa, Continental India, and Singapore.

The bill is greenish-brown, paler and inclining to yellow at the base and rictus. The upper parts of the adult bird in the breeding state are hair-brown, with a glossy lustre and greenish reflections, the shaft of each feather appearing dark, and showing on the wings, and sometimes on the back, narrow transverse lines of a deeper brown. The throat, chin, belly and vent, white, on the former with minute spots of hair-brown; the neck and breast are greyish-white, streaked with hair-brown; axillary feathers white. In the tail, the centre feathers are hair-brown; the next pair show clouded bands across, and are pale at the tips, while those on the outside become more and more distinctly barred with white and hair-brown; in this they show a difference from the same parts in the Spotted Sandpiper, where the outer feathers, though barred, are much more clouded, the outer feathers only showing bars defined in the marking; the tail, in the Common Sandpiper, is also slightly longer and more cuneated. In the young and winter plumage, the wings and upper parts are considerably broken up by dark bars near the tips of the fea thers, which are paler in some parts, inclining to greyish-white.