LONG-LEGGED PLOVER. 75 



The ruddy plover is eight inches long, and fifteen in 

 extent ; the bill is black, an inch long, and straight ; 

 sides of the neck and whole upper parts, speckled 

 largely with white, black, and ferruginous ; the feathers 

 being centred with black, tipt with white, and edged 

 with ferruginous, giving the bird a very motley appear- 

 ance; belly and vent, pure white; wing-quills, black, 

 crossed with a band of white ; lesser coverts, whitish, 

 centred with pale olive, the first two or three rows 

 black ; two middle tail-feathers, black ; the rest, pale 

 cinereous, edged with white ; legs and feet, black ; 

 toes, bordered with a very narrow membrane. On 

 dissection, both males and females varied in their 

 colours and markings. 



GENUS L. HIMANTOPUS, BRISSON. 



225. HIJtANTOPVS fflGRTCOLLIS, VIEILL. 



RECURriROSTRA HIMAJfTOPUS, WILSON. LONG-LEGGED PLOVER. 

 WILSON, PLATE LVIII. FIG. H. EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 



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 circum- 

 stance of the want of a hind toe, there is no resem- 

 blance 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 appears the more repre- 

 hensible, 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, man- 

 ners, 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 



