98 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



to Africa, and southward to the Seychelles and Madagascar. Its habits remind us 

 both of the ]ilovc'r aiul the terns, and so do the unusually large eggs. 



The family CuAUADRiiuji, conij)rising the Plovei's, forms a central and important 

 group of the present order, pretty well circumscribed and homogeneous, though a 

 number of outlying genera present rather trenchant characters, thereby tempting 

 the systematist to establish groups of family rank for their reception. - I refer to the 

 coursers, the turnstones and the oyster-catchers, of which only the latter group has 

 caused me some doubt. The turnstones (^Arenaria) are somewhat peculiar, having a 

 bill of a type different from the common jjlover bill, and present in the muscular 

 formula of the leg, an uiiusii;il s]iecialization, it being AXY against ABXY in the 



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^■(t^?^* >-v 



Pio. 44. — Hamatopiia ostralegut, oy8ter<atcher. 



rest. But the disappearance of the accessory femoro-caudal muscle cannot set off the 

 fact that the genus Aphriza, the affinities of which in both directions are manifest, 

 links the turnstones close to the plovers proper. The oyster-catchers (I/amatojms) 

 are more isolated, having a peculiarly wedge-shaped bill and large supr.a-orbit.al de- 

 pressions for the glands, but can hardly claim family rank, related as they are to the 

 turnstones. The latter form a genus consisting of only two s]iccies, the blaokheaded 

 one (Arenaria melanocephalus), blackish and white, and exclusively Pacific, besides the 

 common species {A. interjyres), which is nearly cosmopolitan in its distribution, and dis- 

 tinffuished from the former by having rusty-brown margins to the feathers of the back 

 and wings; the feet are a beautiful vermilion red, and the bird is well represented in 



