482 KILLIGRE W—KING-BIRD 
This may be the most convenient place to speak of the con- 
geners of the Killdeer, of which there are several in America, and 
among them may be noticed 4. semipalmata, curiously resembling 
the ordinary Ringed Plover of the Old World, 4. Miaticula, except 
that it has its toes connected by a web at the base ; and 2. nivosa, 
a bird inhabiting the western parts of both the American con- 
tinents, which in the opinion of some authors is only a local form 
of the widely-spread AY. alexandrina or cantiana, best known as the 
Kentish Plover, from its discovery near Sandwich, though it is 
far more abundant in many other parts of the Old World (Gxo- 
GRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, p. 341). The common Ringed Plover, 
Ay. hiaticola, has many of the habits of the Killdeer, but is much 
less often found away from the sea-shore, though it has stations 
on dry warrens in certain parts of England many miles from the 
coast, and in Lapland at a still greater distance. In such localities 
it has the habit of paving its nest with small stones, whence it is 
locally known as the “Stone-hatch,” a habit almost unaccount- 
able unless regarded as an inherited instinct from shingle-haunting 
ancestors. 
About thirty species all apparently referable with propriety to 
the genus A/gialitis have been described, but probably so many do 
not exist. Some, as the Kentish Plover above named, have a very 
extended distribution, for that, letting alone its supposed Ameri- 
can habitat, certainly occurs in greater or less numbers on the 
coasts of China, India and Africa 
generally. On the other hand 
there is one, the A’. sancte-helenx, 
which seems to be restricted to 
the island whence it takes its 
scientific name, and is there called 
the “ Wire-bird” (Ibis, 1873, p. 
TmNonwts, (From Buller.) 260). Nearly allied to Agialitis 
are two genera peculiar to the 
New-Zealand Region—Thinornis, which, having been separated on 
the slightest grounds, does not call for any particular remark, and 
the extraordinary Anarhynchus (WRYBILL). 
KILLIGREW, an old name for the CHouGH. 
KING-BIRD!? is the epithet almost universally applied in the 
United States to the best-known representative of the Tyrannidz, 
or the “Tyrant Flycatchers.” In some of the rural districts, 
? For this article I have to thank the well-known American ornithologist, Dr. 
Shufeldt ; but I have to add that more than one species of TERN is called 
‘* King-bird” by sailors, and the name may be often met with in the narratives 
of whaling or sealing voyages to the Southern Ocean.—A. N. 
