CROOK-BTLL PLOVER. 101 



boasts avoid it, with tlie trochilos it lives at peace, since it owes much to that bird, for 

 the crocodile, when he leaves the water, and comes out upon the land, is in the habit of 

 lyino- with his mouth wide open, facing the western breeze; and such times the trochi- 

 los tToes into his mouth and devoms the leeches. This benefits the crocodile, who is 

 pleased and takes care not to hurt the iroc/u'/ox.'''' There is, however, some trutii in 

 the old fable, for Alfred E. Brehm, who, during his travels in northeastern Africa, 

 studied the habits of these birds, asserts that he several times saw this plover without 

 hesitation runnin"- up and down the back of the crocodile, as if it were a green lawn, 

 in search of bugs and leeches, even daring to pick the teeth of its tremendous friend, 

 that is, literally to snatch away food particles which stuck between the teeth, or para- 

 sitic animals which had altachod themselves to the mandibles and the gums. 



Related to the last-mentioned bird, but on longer legs with shorter toes, a bill 

 somewhat resembling that of the pratincole, an<l of an Isabel color corresponding to 

 the sand of the desert it inhabits, is the vrnAm-colovcd com-^cv (Ciirsori us curgoi-), 

 found throughout the southern portion of the Mediterranean province, but known as 

 a not uncommon straggler to the British Islands during the autumnal season. It 

 lives on the arid sand-])lains or on the bare elevated i)latcaus, where scarcely a tuft of 

 scanty herbage or a bush is to be found. It loves to frequent the bases of sand-iiills, 

 and is sometimes seen in the miserable desert pastures or amongst the 

 sand-dunes on the outskirts of the oasis. In these dismal uninteresting 

 regions the courser trips about in ])airs, or less frequQntly in little parties." 

 Completely unique in the shajie of the bill, and probably forming a 

 small group of its own, is the so-called wry-billed, or crook-billed plover 

 {Anarhynchns frontalis), since the end of the bill is not bent down, nor 

 recurved, but turned horizontally to the right, as shown in the accom- 

 panying cut. It was discovered in New Zeal.ind by the French natura- 

 lists, Quoy and Gaimard, who, in 1833, published the first description of 

 this curious bird. The type in the Paris museum remained unique until pio. 47. — Bill 

 18G9, and the AnarJujnchus became so a])ocryphal and dubious that G. biue.^iliover, 

 l{. Gray finally declared the alleged crook-bill to be an individual de- J;™J,.,.i'^ue*' 

 formity, an o])inion shared 1)y many ornithologists of that day. Never- 

 tiieless, the strange crookedne.'is proved to be the normal shape of the bill, the deflex- 

 ion being obvious even in the chick in the egg. The singular beak is thus described 

 by Mr. Potts from a fresh specimen : — 



•• Mill longer than the hea.l, iiointed, curved to the right or off side, curled slightly 

 on itself in a leaf-like manner, a long groove on each side of the upi>cr mandible ; the 

 nostrils long, pierced not far from the base of the bill, fitted with a membranous jiro- 

 CC8S, which, apparently furnished with a system of nerves, extends some distance 

 along the mandible ; interior of both upper and lower mandibles concave or sulcate, 

 which form is maintained to the point ; thus the inside of the bill, when the man- 

 dibles are closed, becomes a curved pipe, with a very slight twist. The tongue, when 

 .at rest, lies well within the lower mandible; it is partly sulcate in form, tapers to a 

 fine point, is much shorter than the beak, leaving a vacant space of six lines from its 

 e-xtremity to the end of the lower mandible; the base is furnished on either si.le with 

 a few spines (three or four), i>lanted in the same direction as those in the roof of 

 the upper mandible ; the thick ]>ortiou of the tongue is indented with four or five verj- 

 slight longitudinal furrows, terminating in the channel into which the t-mgue now 

 resolves itself, till it ends at the very acute point ; this sulcate foi-m is attained by the 



