740 PRATINGOLE 
English in North America to what is known in books as the 
Pinnated GROUSE, the Zympanuchus americanus of recent authors ; 
or, where that does not occur, to forms of the allied genus Pediocextes 
—the Sharp-tailed GROUSE ; but, according to Mr. Trumbull (Names 
and Portr. of Birds, Index, p. 218), the term “ Prairie” is prefixed 
by American sportsmen to many more kinds of birds than there is 
need here to specify. 
PRATINCOLE, a word invented in 1773 by Pennant (Gen. B. 
p- 48), beingan English adaptation of Pratincola, applied in 1756 by 
Kramer (Hlenchus, p. 381) to a bird which had hitherto received no 
definite name, though it had long before been described and even 
recognizably figured by Aldrovandus (Ornithologia, xvii. 9) under the 
vague designation of “ hirundo marina.” It is the Glareola pratincola of 
modern ornithologists, forming the type of a genus Glareola, founded 
by Brisson in 1760, and unquestionably belonging (as is now 
generally admitted) to the group LIMIcoL&, being either placed 
among the Charadriidx(PLOVER,) orregarded as constitutingaseparate 
Family Glareolidx. 'The Pratincoles, of which Mr. Seebohm (Chara- 
driidx, pp. 252-269) recognizes ten species—the last resting on a 
single specimen procured by the late Emin Pasha and described by 
Captain Shelley (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1888, p. 49)—are all small birds, 
slenderly built and mostly delicately coloured, with a short stout 
bill, a wide gape, long pointed wings and a tail more or less forked. 
In some of their habits they are thoroughly Plover-like, running 
very swiftly and breeding on the ground, but on the wing they 
have much the appearance of Swallows, and like them feed, at least 
partly, while flying! The ordinary Pratincole of Europe, @. 
pratincola, breeds abundantly in many parts of Spain, Barbary and 
Sicily, along the valley of the Danube, and in Southern Russia, while 
1 This combination of characters for many years led systematists astray, 
though some of them were from the first correct in their notions as to the 
Pratincole’s position. Linnzus, even in his latest publication, placed it in the 
genus Hirwndo ; but the interleaved and annotated copies of his Systema Naturx 
in the Linnean Society’s library shew the species marked for separation and 
insertion in the Order Grallx—Pratincola trachelia being the name by which he 
had meant to designate it in any future edition. He seems to have been induced 
to this change of view mainly through a specimen of the bird sent to him by 
John the brother of Gilbert White ; but the opinion published in 1769 by Scopoli 
(Ann. I. hist. naturalis, p. 110) had doubtless contributed thereto, though the 
earlier judgment to the same effect of Brisson, as mentioned above, had been dis- 
regarded. Want of space here forbids a notice of the different erroneous assign- 
ments of the form, some of them made even by recent authors, who neglected the 
clear evidence afforded by the internal structure of the Pratincole. It must 
suffice to state that Sundevall in 1873 (Zentamen, p. 86) placed Glareola among 
the Caprimulgidx, a position which its osteology shews cannot be maintained 
for a moment. 
