366 PIPING PLOVER. 



order to exemplify how different from that of authors is this family, as 

 we understand it, we may remark that the birds forming it are scattered 

 by lUiger through his Campestres, Littorales, and Limicolce ; by Cuvier 

 and Latreille divided between their Longirostres and Pressirostres ; by 

 Vieillot placed in Pedionorni, ^gialites, Helionomi ; in TacMdromi 

 and Limose by Ranzani and Savi ; in Charadriadce and Seolopacidce by 

 Vigors, &c. 



Our genus Charadrius has different limits from those of perhaps any 

 recent or former author, being more extensive than in many, but more 

 contracted than that of Wagler, which comprehends all our typical 

 Charadridce. Linn^, who made it a sort of receptacle for nearly all 

 three-toed Waders, has placed in Tringa some of our Plovers that are 

 furnished with a rudiment of hind toe, and the same has been done by 

 Gmelin, Latham, Illiger, and even, though to a less extent, by Cuvier. 

 As long since restricted by the separation of Himantopus and Calidris, 

 which are not of the same family, and of (Edicnemus, which truly is, 

 it is much more natural ; especially if with Wilson we unite with it, as 

 nature dictates, those species that happen to possess the rudiment of a 

 fourth toe. Among the earlier writers Brisson was the first who assigned 

 more natural limits to the genus which he called Pluviatis, and his two 

 well enough composed genera, Pluvialis and Vanellus, include all our 

 Plovers. Cuvier, Temminck, Vieillot, and Ranzani place the four- 

 toed Plovers with the Lapwings, Vanellus. Savi more recently has 

 evinced his good judgment by separating them at least from Vanellus, 

 if he does not unite them with Charadrius, which his professedly artificial 

 system did not allow. 



I distinguish two subgenera in my extensive genus Charadrius, regard- 

 ing Scfcatarola of Cuvier and Savi as no more than a section of my 

 first subgenus, of so little importance do I consider the anomaly' of the 

 hind toe, the sole characteristic of that artificial group. These sub- 

 genera are : 1. Pluvialis, for the large mottled species without a collar, 

 and with variegated plumage. Such are amongst the three-toed the 

 European and Asiatic C. pluvialis and morinellus, and the American 

 virginicus (or marmoratus) ; and among the four-toed the Europeo- 

 Asiatic bird C. gregarius, and the cosmopolite C. helveticus. 2. ^gi- 

 alitis, Boie, or the Ring-Plovers, which have a broad white collar 

 around the neck. This is the more numerous in species, and the present 

 belongs to it : it may form two sections, one for the semipalmated Ring- 

 Plovers, whose toes are all connected at base by a membrane, and the 

 other for this and the remaining Ring-Plovers, in which the inner toe is 

 separated down to the base. As for the armed or spur-winged Plovers, 

 as well as the wattled species, all I have examined were perfectly similar 

 to the armed and wattled Lapwing, and they constitute in my arrange- 

 ment a very natural subgenus under the name of ffoplopterus, which 



