GRALL^E. 



97 



to and fro with surprising swiftness, in spite of its short legs. The flight is described 

 as swallow-like, or rather like that of the terns. The note, according to Seebohm, is 

 a peculiar rattle, impossible to express on paper, though the principal sound may be 

 represented by Jcr rapidly repeated. Naumann mentions a peculiar movement of 

 this bird, which he says is exactly like the dipping of the body and jerking of the 

 tail of the wheat-ear (Saxicola cenanthe). The food of the pratincole consists exclu- 

 sively of insects, and an allied species (G. melanoptera), differing in having black 

 under wing-coverts, which occurs from southeastern Russia southwards as far as the 

 Cape Colony, is highly estimated as a valuable destroyer of the grasshoppers, accord- 

 ing to the interesting account given by the Austrian traveler, Mr. Holub. 



FIG. 43. Arenarla interpres, turnstone. 



A small family, DROMADID^E, with a single living representative (Dromas ardeola\ 

 may find a proper resting place here after having been knocked around between the 

 herons and the terns. The aspect is that of a plover, or rather a thick-knee with a 

 somewhat large and peculiar bill, and Temminck guessed pretty near the truth when 

 he referred it to the neighborhood of the latter, for the Dutch zoologist, J. van der 

 Hoeven, has shown that the skeleton is very much like that of the oyster-catcher, next 

 to which we place it with the remark that it differs from the true Charadriidae in hav- 

 ing no occipital foramina and no basipterygoid processes, in these respects agreeing 

 with the foregoing families. The ' crab-plover ' inhabits shores from India, westward 

 VOL. iv. 7 



