PRATINCOLES. 



95 



in length from the basal phalange to the penultimate one. The pterylosis has no 

 characteristic features. This super-family is equivalent to the ' order ' LimicolaB, as 

 usually adopted, and the 'group' Charadriomorphae of Huxley. 



The first family to meet us is that of the pratincoles or GLAKEOLID^E, a small 

 group of Old World birds of very peculiar appearance. They have long pointed 

 wings and a rather long, deeply forked tail, a feature quite unique among Limicoline 

 birds. To this is added a rather compressed bill and deeply split mouth, besides com- 

 paratively short feet. On the whole they have a very great resemblance to some of 

 the smaller terns both in flight and habits. Nothing is more certain, however, than 



FIG. 41. Glareola pratincola, common pratincole. 



that these birds are closely allied to the plovers, as also to members of the foregoing 

 super-family, especially the Chionis, with which they agree in lacking occipital 

 foramina and basipterygoid processes. That Linnaeus placed the common pratin- 

 cole ( Glareola pratincola) in his genus Hirundo, on account of its forked tail and 

 deeply split mouth, is perhaps not so strange. But that Sundevall, as late as 1874, 

 denied the Charadriine affinities entirely, giving it place in the ' family ' Caprimul- 

 gina3 as an aberrant group of goat-suckers, referring, as he did, to the large size of the 

 eyes, the form of the bill, the pectination of the long middle claw, and the somewhat 

 sideways position of the hind toe, shows how unsafe it is to rely upon external char- 

 acters alone in cases of intricate relationship. The species represented in the accom- 



