SPECIES . REC UR VIROSTRA HIMrfNTOP US. * 



LONG-LEGGED AVOSET. 



[Plate LVIIL Fig. 2.] 



Long-legged Plover, Jlrct. ZooL p. 487, JV*o. 405. TURTON, p. 

 416. BEWICK, n, 21. .L'c/msse, BUFF, vm, 114. PL.Enl.S7Q. 

 PEALE'S Museum, JVo. 4210. 



NATURALISTS have most unaccountably classed this bird with 

 the genus Charadrius, or Plover, and yet affect to make the 

 particular conformation of the bill, legs and feet, the rule of their 

 arrangement. In the present subject, however, excepting the 

 trivial circumstance of the want of a hind toe, there is no re- 

 semblance whatever of those parts to the bill, legs or feet, of the 

 Plover; on the contrary, they are so entirely different, as to 

 create no small surprise at the adoption, and general acceptation, 

 of a classification, evidently so absurd and unnatural. This ap- 

 pears the more reprehensible, when we consider the striking 

 affinity there is between this bird and the common Avoset, not 

 only in the particular form of the bill, nostrils, tongue, legs, feet, 

 wings and tail, but extending to the voice, manners, food, place 

 of breeding, form of the nest, and even the very colour of the 

 eggs of both, all of which are strikingly alike, and point out, at 

 once, to the actual observer of nature, the true relationship of 

 these remarkable birds. 



Strongly impressed with these facts, from an intimate ac- 

 quaintance with the living subjects, in their native wilds, I have 

 presumed to remove the present species to the true and proper 

 place assigned it by nature; and shall now proceed to detail 

 some particulars of its history. 



* This bird belongs to the genus Him'mtopus of Brisson. 



