98 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



to Africa, and southward to the Seychelles and Madagascar. Its habits remind us 

 both of the plover and the terns, and so do the unusually large eggs. 



The family CHARADBIID^E, comprising the Plovers, forms a central and important 

 group of the present order, pretty well circumscribed and homogeneous, though a 

 number of outlying genera present rather trenchant characters, thereby tempting 

 the systematist to establish groups of family rank for their reception. I refer to the 

 coursers, the turnstones and the oyster-catchers, of which only the latter group has 

 caused me some doubt. The turnstones (Arenaria) are somewhat peculiar, having a 

 bill of a type different from the common plover bill, and present in the muscular 

 formula of the leg, an unusual specialization, it being AXY against ABXY in the 





FIG. 44. Hcematopus ostralegus, oyster-catcher. 



rest. But the disappearance of the accessory femoro-caudal muscle cannot set off the 

 fact that the genus Aphriza, the affinities of which in both directions are manifest, 

 links the turnstones close to the plovers proper. The oyster-catchers (Hcematopus) 

 are more isolated, having a peculiarly wedge-shaped bill and large supra-orbital de- 

 pressions for the glands, but can hardly claim family rank, related as they are to the 

 turnstones. The latter form a genus consisting of only two species, the blackheaded 

 one (Arenaria melanocephalus), blackish and white, and exclusively Pacific, besides the 

 common species (A. interpres), which is nearly cosmopolitan in its distribution, and dis- 

 tinguished from the former by having rusty-brown margins to the feathers of the back 

 and wings ; the feet are a beautiful vermilion red, and the bird is well represented in 



