RUFF, Machetes pugnax, the only known species of its genus, is a bird of the family scholopacirkc, and like snipes and many others of the family, an inhabitant of marshy places. It is found in most of the northern parts of the world, migrating southward in autumn, and northward in spring. It is found in England and in Ireland, but not in Scotland, probably because there are few localities in that country suitable to it. In size the ruff is considerably larger than a snipe, and is about a foot in entire length, from the point of the bill to the tip of the tail. The tail is short and pointed. The wings are long and pointed. The legs are long and slender, the tibia naked for some distance above the tarsal joint. The bill is straight, rather slender, as the head. The neck of the male is surrounded in the breeding season with a ref of numerous long feathers, whence probably the English name. The males are remarkable for diversity of colors, no two specimens being ever similar; but ash-brown prevails, spotted or mottled with black; the head, ruff, and shoulders are black, glossed with purple, and variously barred with chestnut. The female (the reeve) is mostly ash-brown, with spots
of dark-brown, much more uniform in color than the male. Their nest is usually situ ated on a tussock in a moist, swampy place, and is formed of the coarse grass which surrounds it. The eggs are four in number. The ruff is taken for the table in spring, but the young birds taken in autumn are very preferable. They are often fattened after being taken, and are fed on bread and milk with bruised hemp-seed. After being fat tened, they are sent to market. They feed readily when quite newly caught, and fight desperately for their food, unless supplied in separate dishes, which is therefore the regular practice of the feeders, who find it also advantameous to keep them in darkened apartments. The ruff is gradually becoming scarcer in England, owing to the destruc tion of its favorite haunts, the fens, by drainage.