378 SHORE BIRDS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 
piper (Tringa minutela), the greater sand piper (Tringa Bairdii), 
and the semipalmated sand piper, E pusillus. It is with the 
greatest doubt I make this classification, as I think Tringa Bair- 
dii too recent a nomenclature for a bird so well known. In Nut- 
tall’s work, so singular for its truth, he marks the Stint, a bird 
that I have never seen here or any sand peeps with any lateral 
tail feathers white. Besides in his descriptions and measurements 
he confounds at least four species. I shall minutely describe the 
two species of the Ring plover as I find them here, only saying 
that they as well as the sand peeps were selected from a heap of 
dead, brought in from shooting, and containing all five species of 
Ring plover and sand peeps in one stiffened mass. 
Common Ring Plover shot at Digby, N.S, August 12, 1876: 
Length, 7} inches. 
Wing to wing, 15 inches 
Ball, 3 inch, 
Tarsus, 1 inch. 
Toes, § inch. 
The bill was high at base, nostrils basal black at tip, dull orange 
at base, legs and tees dull orange, nails black, joints pencilled 
black, no hind toe, toes joined at base with webs, outer web 
nearly double the inner. In colour, forehead, chin, neck running 
behind the head, all below and inside the wing, white. Above 
head, hind head, back, shoulders and wing coverts, olive brown. 
The forehead is black, holding within it a white spot, and run- 
ning beneath the eye to the lores. A deep black collar, nearly an 
inch broad and running insensibly at the back into brown, sur- 
rounds the neck. ‘Tail, when closed, black, sides of rump lightest ; 
tail of twelve feathers. Outside feather white outer edge, more 
or less white on tips of four outside feathers, middle feathers 
black at ends ; primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries more or less 
dark with white shafts, coverts tipped obscurely with white. 
Some specimens had scarlet rings around the eyes, some not, 
The olive brown colour and the semipalmated and orange foot, 
determine their species very easily, as the semipalmated 
plover of Wilson, and the Agialites semipalmatus of Coues. 
Another Ring neck shot in August, 1876, differed from these in 
