Scissors, s. A small pair of shears, or blades moveable on a pivot, and intercepting the thing to be cut. Scissors with very fine points are indispensable to fly-tiers.
Scollop, s. A pectinated shell fish.
Scolopax, (Illiger,) s. The snipe, a genus thus characterised:—
Bill long, straight, compressed, slender, soft, bulged at the point; the two mandibles furrowed about the half of their length; the point of the upper mandible longer than the under, the bulged part forming a hook; ridge elevated at its base and salient; nostril, at the sides of the base, slit lengthwise, near the edges of the mandible, covered by a membrane; legs of mean length, slender, the naked space above the knee very small; three toes before entirely divided, the middle and the outer ones rarely united; one toe behind; wings of mean length, the first quill of equal length, or a little shorter than the second, which is the longest in the wing.
This division of the numerous scolopax genus of Linnæus amounts, according to Latham, to about twenty species, besides varieties, of which only the woodcock, common snipe, and judcock, and their varieties, are accounted British birds.
Pennant has placed the woodcock after the curlews, as the head of the godwits and snipes; and others are of opinion that the knot, from the similarity of its figure to that of the woodcock, ought to be classed in this tribe. In the subdivisions, ornithologists may vary their classification without end. As in a chain doubly suspended, the rings of which gradually diminish towards the middle, the leading features of some particular bird may point it out as a head to a tribe; others, from similarity of shape, plumage, or habits, will form, by almost imperceptible variations, the connecting links; and those which may be said to compose the curvature of the bottom, by gradations equally minute, will rise to the last ring of the other end, which, as the head of another tribe, will be marked with characters very different from the first.—Montagu.
Scoter, Black Duck, or Black Diver, (Anas Nigra, Linn.; La Macreuse, Buff.) s. A kind of duck.
The scoter is less than the velvet duck, weighing generally about two pounds nine ounces, and measuring twenty-two inches in length, and thirty-four in breadth.
In severe winter the scoters leave the northern extremities of the world in immense flocks, dispersing themselves southward along the shores of more temperate climates. They are only sparingly scattered on the coasts of England.