804 SANDERLING 
ing of this species in Iceland, since they shewed that an egg which 
had been brought thence in 1858 could hardly belong to any other. 
In the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6 Col. Feilden (Zbis, 1877, p. 406, 
and Nares, Voyage to the Polar Sea, ii. p. 210, pl.) found a nest 
with two eggs, which fully agree with the rest. Thus it will appear 
that the breeding-range of this species, so far as is at present known 
with certainty, extends only from Iceland (say long. 15° W.) to 
Point Barrow (say long. 155° W.), and that interruptedly, though it 
is just possible that some part of the Arctic coast of Asia may have 
to be included, but not that of Europe, Nova Zembla or Spits- 
bergen. In autumn the Sanderling is well known to pass south- 
ward across, or along the coast of all the great continents, though it 
winters in no inconsiderable numbers in temperate climes, our own, 
for example; but, while it reaches Patagonia in the New World and 
the Cape of Good Hope in the Old, it seems mostly content to stay 
on the northern margin of the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, only 
rarely venturing to Ceylon or Burma; and, hitherto unknown to 
the Malay Peninsula, has been observed but on two of the islands 
(Borneo and Java) of that Archipelago. Yet it appears on the 
Chinese sea-board generally, and has even been obtained in New 
South Wales, while its occurrence, perhaps more or less accidental, 
has been recorded at spots distant enough from its true home—such 
as the Sandwich Islands, the Galapagos and the Marshall group in 
the Pacific, the Lacdivies, Aldabra and Madagascar in the Indian 
Ocean, and the Canaries, Madeira and Bermuda in the Atlantic, to 
say nothing of the Antilles. Observation seems to shew that in 
such outlying places it appears less frequently and more irregularly 
than several of its wandering kindred, and wherever it tarries, 
whether on passage or to winter, it rather prefers the drier sandy 
shores, where it consorts with PLovErs of the genus 4 ialitis, to 
the expanses of mud or marsh that so many of its allies affect. 
The Sanderling belongs to the group Tringinw (SANDPIPER) but 
is always recognizable by wanting the small hind toe, a distinction 
that justifies its generic separation, and it has long been the Calidris 
arenaria of ornithology.2 It undergoes a seasonal change quite as 
remarkable as the KNor and some others, its winter-suit being of a 
beautiful silvery-grey, making the bird at times look almost wholly 
white, but in spring the head, back and breast become mottled with 
rust-colour and black, the former predominating in the form of a 
broad edging to the feathers; but the belly and lower parts are 
white all the year round. 
1 It is pretty obvious that there must be places in high northern latitudes 
where the Sanderling, the Knot and several other allied species breed in 
profusion. 
* Linneus described it twice, first asa Charadrius and then as a Tringa. “The 
absence of the hallux induced many systematists to put it among the Plovers. 
