of himantopus^ or loripes, and Charadrius himantopus, 

 were shot upon the verge of Frinsham pond, a large 

 lake belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, and 

 lying between Wolmer Forest and the town of 

 Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The pond- 

 keeper says there were three brace in the flock ; 

 but that after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suf- 

 fered the sixth to remain unmolested. One of 

 these specimens I procured, and found the length 

 of the legs to be so extraordinary, that, at first 

 sight, one might have supposed the shanks had 

 been fastened on to impose on the credulity of the 

 beholder: they were legs in caricatura ; and had we 

 seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen 

 we should have made large allowances for the fancy 

 of the draughtsman. These birds are of the plover 

 family, and might with propriety be called the stilt 

 plovers. Brisson, under that idea, gives them the 

 apposite name of V^chasse. My specimen, when 

 drawn and stuffed with pepper, weighed only four 

 ounces and a quarter, though the naked part of the 

 thigh measured three inches and a half, and the legs 

 four inches and a half. Hence we may safely assert 

 that these birds exhibit, weight for inches, incom- 

 parably the greatest length of legs of any known 

 bird. The flamingo, for instance, is one of the most 

 long-legged birds, and yet it bears no manner of 

 proportion to the himantoptis ; for a cock flamingo 

 weighs, at an average, about four pounds avoirdu- 



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