378 iMr. J. E. Hailing ow rare 



not, this is almost the only point wherein they differ in tlicir 

 food from the Rails and the Herons and other true waders with 

 which they are thrown into intimate, if temporary, association and 

 alliance. It has been to me a never-failing source of interest to 

 watch these wading perchers, so truly aquatic in habit, brought 

 into such close relations with birds to which they have no affinity ; 

 and watching them would bring unbidden the reflection, how 

 beautifully Nature, in her wise economy, causes seemingly for- 

 tuitous circumstance to mould her few great types into many 

 different shapes, to bend her few great aims to unnumbered pur- 

 poses, to resolve her essential unity into endless diversity ! 

 Fort Macon, North Carolina, 

 February 1870. 



XXVI. — On rare or little-known Limicolse. 

 By James Edmund Harting, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



(Plate XI.) 

 [Continued from p. 213.] 



I PROPOSED in my last paper, for the sake of convenience, to 

 divide the rufous-breasted Plovers into iwo groups — those which 

 in structure and habits resemble the Dotterels {Eudromias) , and 

 those whose affinities are with the Shore-Plovers {jEgialitis). 



Having disposed of the former, I now proceed with the latter, 

 and will try to bring together materials for a complete history, 

 so far as possible, of the remaining two species, jE. geojfroyi 

 and jE. mongolicus, whose general resemblance, as I before men- 

 tioned, both in summer and winter plumage, has led to their 

 being frequently confounded. 



5. ^GIALITIS GEOFFROYI. 



C/iaradrius asiaticus, Horstield, Trans. Linn. Soc, xiii. p. 187 

 (1820) ; Tristram, P. Z. S. 1864, p. 450, et Ibis, 1867, p. 93 

 {nee Pall). 



Charadrius geoffroyi, Wagler, Syst. Av. fol. 4, p. 13, no. 19 

 (1827) ; Kittlitz, Kupfert. Vog. p. 26, pi. 34, fig. 2 (1833) ; 

 Blyth, J. A. S. B. xii. p. 180 (1843); Heuglin, Ibis, 1859, 

 p. 345 ; E. Newton, op. cit. 1863, p. 455, ct 1866, p. 313; 

 Blyth, op. cit. 1865, p. 34. 



