328 SHUFELDT. (Vou. II. 
the upper two-thirds of its anterior border, sharpened below, and 
concaved throughout. Along its lower margin a thickened rim 
defines its edge, which is outlined by a long, gentle convexity 
from carinal angle in front to mid-xiphoidal process behind 
(Fig. 12). 
Viewing the bone upon its pectoral aspect, a muscular line — 
the zuterpectoral muscular line we will call it here — extends, 
on either side, from the boundary of the costal fossa beneath, 
to the inner of the pair of xiphoidal notches behind, to the 
mesial edge of the same. This line occurs sharply defined 
in both Plovers and Oyster-catchers, where it is similarly drawn, 
as it is likewise in a Turnstone. 
Arenaria has a sternum, which, excepting the fact of its being 
a size smaller, is the perfect counterpart of the bone in A. vir- 
gata, though in the latter species the sternal keel seems to be 
comparatively a trifle deeper in proportion. 
When I published my Osteology of Numenius longirostris, I 
therein stated that the sternum to a skeleton of the Spotted 
Sandpiper (A. macularia) possessed two notches upon either 
side, a large outer pair and a very small inner pair. Those 
skeletons were prepared and the species diagnosed by a very 
incompetent man, and at the present writing I am not prepared 
to vouch for the correctness of the statement. I have had to 
regret many times since, the confidence I placed in the identifi- 
cation of the skeletons which went to make up the collection 
of the vertebrate series in the Museum and Library of the 
Surgeon General’s Office of the Army at Washington; they 
were the cause of a number of oversights creeping into my 
avian osteology in early days, which now are being corrected 
in my more recent papers. So I am inclined to believe that the 
Jfour-notched sternum of Actitis may be a specimen from the 
same category; it was “on file” in the same institution. At 
any rate, we have before us now an excellent skeleton of Actzézs 
of my own collecting, and it possesses but a pazr of notches in 
its sternum, otherwise the bone has the general pattern of the 
Limicole at large. 
In afew days The Auk for July (1888) will be issued, and in 
there, in a letter to its distinguished editors, I point out the 
fact that the Solitary Sandpiper is another species which has 
but a pair of notches in its sternum, and suggest that its old 
