These are tall birds, with long bills, destined to live in marshes, and on the swampy shores of rivers, their soft and flexible bill being unfit for picking food from the sur face of a hard or gravelly soil, and only adapted to ransack the slime or moist sand. Hence they live in marshy mea dows, and habitually resort to the mouths of rivers, where the mud is deep, and supplies them with worms, the larva; of insects, &c. Their periods of migration coincide with those of the snipes and horsemen, with both of which they have been confounded. They moult twice a-year, and the females later than the males, which is an uncommon phy siological phenomenon. The family is far from nume rous, and will be sufficiently illustrated by mention of a single species.
L. nzelanura, Leisler, Tom Scolopax limosa, Lin. To tanus linzosa, Bechst. Black-tailed Ooze-Sucker, Jadreka Snipe, Lesser Godwit, Common, or Grey Godwit. or Stone Plover. Bill straight, tail black for two-thirds of its length, with the base more or less white ; nail of the middle toe long, and denticulated. The young, before their first moult, correspond to the Tutaizus rafts of Bechstein ; and the bird, in its complete summer attire, is Totanus egocephalus of the same author, and Scolopax cegocephata. and Scolopax flelgicu of Gmelin. Length of the full grown bird from fifteen to eighteen inches ; extent of wing about two feet, and weight from seven to twelve ounces; for it varies much in size. Most of the indi
viduals that are killed in spring are in the moulting state, and have a very mottled aspect. They search the mud with nice discrimination, haunting the marshy districts-of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the oozy banks of ditches and pools, and, in winter, the sea-shore, on which they run with great swiftness, living chiefly on insects and their larva:, worms, the spawn of frogs, and some aquatic and marsh plants. They usually lie concealed among the reeds or rushes during the day, being extremely shy, and venturing out at twilight, or in moonshine, flying sometimes in considerable flocks, and uttering a hoarse but feeble clamour, which Belon has compared to the stifled bleating of a goat Their air is timid and demure, and, on the slightest alarm, they take to flight. At times, however, flocks of them will allow themselves to be shot at repeatedly without retiring to a safe distance. They breed in the tall herbage of fens and marshes, the female laying four eggs, of a deep olivaceous hue, marked with large pale brown spots. They are much esteemed by epicures, being quite free of the rankness of sonic of our shore-birds, and of the fishy taste of others. They are caught in nets, to which they arc allured by a stale or stuffed bird, and in the same manner, and at the same season, as the ruffs and reeves.