740 PRATINCOLE 



English in North America to what is known in books as the 

 Pinnated GROUSE, the Tympanuchus americanus of recent authors; 

 or, where that does not occur, to forms of the allied genus Pediocsetes 

 the Sharp-tailed GROUSE ; but, according to Mr. Trumbull (Names 

 and Portr. of Birds, Index, p. 218), the term "Prairie" is prefixed 

 by American sportsmen to many more kinds of birds than there is 

 need here to specify. 



PKATINCOLE, a word invented in 1773 by Pennant (Gen. B. 

 p. 48), being an English adaptation of Pratincola, applied in 1756 by 

 Kramer (Elenclms, p. 381) to a bird which had hitherto received no 

 definite name, though it had long before been described and even 

 recognizably figured by Aldrovandus (Ornithologia, xvii. 9) under the 

 vague designation of " hirundo marina." It is the Glareola pratincola of 

 modern ornithologists, forming the type of a genus Glareola, founded 

 by Brisson in 1760, and unquestionably belonging (as is now 

 generally admitted) to the group LIMICOL^E, being either placed 

 among the Charadriidas (PLOVER,) or regarded as constituting a separate 

 Family Glareolidse. The Pratincoles, of which Mr. Seebohm (Chara- 

 driidze, pp. 252-269) recognizes ten species the last resting on a 

 single specimen procured by the late Emin Pasha and described by 

 Captain Shelley (Proc. Zool Soc. 1888, p. 49) are all small birds, 

 slenderly built and mostly delicately coloured, with a short stout 

 bill, a wide gape, long pointed wings and a tail more or less forked. 

 In some of their habits they are thoroughly Plover-like, running 

 very swiftly and breeding on the ground, but on the wing they 

 have much the appearance of Swallows, and like them feed, at least 

 partly, while flying. 1 The ordinary Pratincole of Europe, G. 

 pratincola, breeds abundantly in many parts of Spain, Barbary and 

 Sicily, along the valley of the Danube, and in Southern Russia, while 



1 This combination of characters for many years led systematists astray, 

 though some of them were from the first correct in their notions as to the 

 Pratincole's position. Linnseus, even in his latest publication, placed it in the 

 genus Hirundo ; but the interleaved and annotated copies of his Systema Nature 

 in the Linnean Society's library shew the species marked for separation and 

 insertion in the Order Grallse Pratincola trachelia being the name by which he 

 had meant to designate it in any future edition. He seems to have been induced 

 to this change of view mainly through a specimen of the bird sent to him by 

 John the brother of Gilbert White ; but the opinion published in 1769 by Scopoli 

 (Ann. I. hist, naturalis, p. 110) had doubtless contributed thereto, though the 

 earlier judgment to the same effect of Brisson, as mentioned above, had been dis- 

 regarded. Want of space here forbids a notice of the different erroneous assign- 

 ments of the form, some of them made even by recent authors, who neglected the 

 clear evidence afforded by the internal structure of the Pratincole. It must 

 suffice to state that Sundevall in 1873 (Tentamen, p. 86) placed Glareola among 

 the Caprimulgidse, a position which its osteology shews cannot be maintained 

 for a moment. 



