238 NATURAL HISTORY 



in caricatura ; and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese 

 or Japan screen we should have made large allowances for 

 the fancy of the draughtsman. These birds are of the plover 

 family, and might with propriety be called the stilt plovers. 

 Brisson, under that idea, gives them the apposite name of 

 Vechasse. My specimen, when drawn and stuffed with pep- 

 per, weighed only four ounces and a quarter, though the 

 naked part of the thigh measured three inches and an half, 

 and the legs four inches and an half. Hence we may safely 

 assert that these birds exhibit, weight for inches, incompar- 

 ably the greatest length of legs of any known bird. The 

 flamingo, for instance, is one of the most long legged birds, 

 and yet it bears no manner of proportion to the himantopus ; 

 for a cock flamingo weighs, at an average, about four pounds 

 avoirdupois ; and his legs and thighs measure usually about 

 twenty inches. But four pounds are fifteen times and a 

 fraction more than four ounces and one quarter ; and if four 

 ounces and a quarter have eight inches of legs, four pounds 

 must have one hundred and twenty inches and a fraction of 

 legs; viz. somewhat more than ten feet; such a monstrous 

 proportion as the world never saw * I If you should try the 

 experiment in still larger birds the disparity would still 

 increase. It must be matter of great curiosity to see the 

 stilt plover move ; to observe how it can wield such a length 

 of lever with such feeble muscles as the thighs seem to be 

 furnished with. At best one should expect it to be but a 

 bad walker : but what adds to the wonder is that it has no 

 back toe. Now without that steady prop to support it's steps 

 it must be liable, in speculation, to perpetual vacillations, and 

 seldom able to preserve the true center of gravity. 



The old name of himantopus is taken from Pliny ; and, by 



* [It is remarkable that a man so accurate as the author should have 

 fallen into so obvious a mistake as this, to which my attention was drawn 

 many years ago by my late nephew Dr. Bell Salter ; and it is not less so 

 that one edition after another has appeared under the supervision and 

 auspices of so many successive editors without detection. The proportion 

 of the limb should be according to the cube root of the weight of each 

 bird j and in the present instance, by a simple calculation, it. will be seen 

 that nature is right and that Gilbert White was wrong. T. B.] 



