334 SHUFELDT. [Vow. II. 
biggest and placed the lowest on the bone. The ones upon 
either side of it are directed to the rear. At its usual site, 
above the innermost one, is faintly to be discerned the facette 
for the articulation of the os metatarsale accessorius, of hallux 
phalanx. Already the ornithologist has placed at our command 
the fact that the arrangement of the joints of pes in this spe- 
cies, as in Avenaria and many Tringe@, is upon the most com- 
mon plan of 2, 3, 4,and 5 bones from hind toe to outermost 
digit, respectively, and a study of these in the skeleton reveals 
nothing peculiar in them. 
The Black Turnstone being a somewhat smaller bird than 
Aphriza, it has a correspondingly smaller pelvic limb and skele- 
ton ; aside from this fact, however, the several bones of that 
extremity are fashioned quite as they are in our Surf-bird, and 
present no decided differences in any particular. This state- 
ment applies with equal truth to various Sandpipers, and would 
to Charadrius were it not that in the latter genus a dispropor- 
tion, and a disproportion merely, exists in the hallux, — that 
toe being much smaller in the Plover, though all the other 
bones of the limb are remarkably similar in all their essential 
features, bone for bone, as we have described and figured them 
for Aphriza virgata. Hallux is also missing in Hematopus, 
where we sometimes find a process of bone anchylosed to the 
shaft of tarso-metatarsus, at a point where the accessory meta- 
tarsal is commonly attached by ligament. In a specimen of 
HT. bachmant before me, such a process is to be found upon the 
shaft of the tarso-metatarsus of the right pelvic limb, but is 
missing from the corresponding bone in the opposite limb of 
the same individual. Strange to say, this is precisely the state 
of affairs in the skeleton of a second specimen at my hand, — 
the process is present in the right, absent in the left. It may 
prove of interest to look further into this point with additional 
specimens. Returning to our comparison between the pelvic 
limb of this Oyster-catcher, then, with the same part of the 
skeleton in Aphriza, we may say in brief that beyond the few 
exceptions mentioned the limb in the former is simply an ampli- 
fication of the limb in the latter species, — its bone for bone, 
character for character, the same thing over again, only the 
mould happened to be several sizes larger wherein the skeleton 
of these parts in our Oyster-caicher were cast. 
