On the Systematic Position of the Raff. 609 



coast of North America, and suggest that the isLmds off 

 tlie coast north of Vancouver to Alaska may hide these and 

 otlier breeding forms. 



As this paper deals only with Petrels we may perhaps be 

 allowed to add a note o£ interest foreign to the preceding. 

 We would like to point out that the names proposed by us 

 are arbitrary combinations of letters without any meaning 

 whatever, unless we definitely give such. We consider it 

 often impossible to guess the meaning of a word, and we 

 would here cite the curious case of Daption, Stephens gave 

 this name to a genus of Petrels and many workers have 

 studied Greek dictionaries, attempting to extort a meaning. 

 Daptrion, Daptiuni and Daptes have been suggested, the last 

 mentioned now appearing as the meaning in the recent 

 B. 0. U. List of British Birds. It has recently occurred to us 

 that Daption is simply an anagram or metathesis of Pintado, 

 a seamen^s name for the bird, and that our predecessors' 

 labours for a derivation from the Greek have been in vain. 



XX VIIT. — Studies on the Charadriiformes. — I. On the 

 Systematic Position of the Ruff (Machetes pugnax) and 

 the Semipalmated Sandpiper (Ereunetes pusillus), together 

 ivith a Revieiv of some Osteological characters which 

 differentiate the EroliincB {Dunlin grouj)) from the Trinyince 

 {^Redshank group) . By Percy 11. Lowe, M.B., M.B.O.U. 

 (Text-figures 10& 11.) 



In the British Museum Catalogue of Birds (vol, xxiv.) ; in 

 the British Museum Hand-list of Birds ; in Seebohm's 

 'Geographical Distribution of the Charadriidae ^ ; in the 

 recent *B. O.U. List of British Birds,' 1915, and in fact, 

 so far as I am aware, in every systematic treatise or book 

 in which a distinction is made between the subfamilies 

 Tringinse (Totaninae olhn) and Eroliinse (Tringinse olim), 

 the Buff is included in the subfamily Tringinse or the 

 Redshank group of Waders, as opposed to the Eroliinse oi* 

 the Dunlin association. 



In some works, such as the A. O. U. Check-List of North 

 American Birds, no distinction is drawn between these two 



