252 FINFOOT 
on them are likely to be correct ; others are further apart, and the 
links which connect them, if not altogether missing, can but be 
surmised. 
FINFOOT, Latham’s name in 1824 (Gen. Hist. B. x. p. 10) for 
two birds which he then rightly associated. One of them from 
America, the size of a small Teal, had been long known, and 
formerly referred by him to the genus Plofus (SNAKE-BIRD), while 
Pennant in 1776, in Peter Brown’s Illustrations of Zoology (pl. 39, 
p. 98), had described it as the “Surinam Tern,” and it was figured 
by Daubenton (P77. enl. 893) and described in 1781 by Buffon as the 
Grebe- Foulque. In 1790 the ill-fated 
Bonnaterre established the genus Heli- 
ornis+ for it. Its affinities remained 
uncertain until the publication in 1839 
of Brandt’s Beitriéige zur Kenntniss der 
Naturgeschichte der Vogel, communicated 
to the Academy of St. Petersburg, 
wherein he shewed (pp. 117-122) that 
they were rather towards the RaAILs ; 
but people have been slow to admit the 
force of his osteological evidence, though it has since been confirmed 
in the case of another species of the group by Jerdon (Bb. Ind. iii. p. 
721). In the meanwhile Prince Maximilian of Wied had in 1832 
published his observations on the bird’s habits (Beitr. zur Naturgesch. 
Brasilien, iv. pp. 827, 828), and very curious some of them are, for 
he says that he himself had shot a cock-bird, under the wings of 
which were two newly-hatched, naked young. ‘The old birds swim 
and dive adroitly, but their flight is heavy, though they run swiftly 
on land, and they are addicted to perching on trees. The proper 
name of this species is Heliornis fulica, though it appears In some 
works as Podoa surinamensis. It has an extensive range in the 
Neotropical Region from Guatemala to Paraguay (Proc. Zool. Soe. 
1868, p. 469); but it is not found in the Patagonian Subregion. 
The second species described, as above stated, by Latham, and 
as he thought for the first time, is a much larger bird from 
Western Africa, made known by Vieillot in 1817 (N. Dict. d’ Hist. 
Nat. ed. 2, xiv. p. 277) as Heliornis senegalensis, but in 1831 Lesson 
put it in a genus by itself which he called Podica. 'The differences 
between them, though of no real importance, are yet sufficient to 
warrant the separation ; and this P. senegalensis is said to be repre- 
sented on the opposite side of the African continent by a yet 
bigger species, P. peivrsi or mosambicuna, ranging from Natal north- 
Henrornis. (After Swainson.) 
1 This name seems to have arisen from a mistake of Latham’s (Synops. B. iii. 
p- 626) who in 1785 supposed the ‘‘ Oiseau de Soleil,” so translated by Fermin in 
1769 (Deser. Surinam, ii. p. 192) from the Dutch Sonne-vogel, to be the present 
bird, whereas it is obviously the Hurypyga (SUN-BITTERN). 
