188 GRALL^E. 



The nests are rarely seen, in proportion to the number of 

 the birds, as, when raised, they run and double so quickly, 

 that it is not easy to find the places from which they 

 start. 



TIUNGAS (Tringa). 



The birds which, with perfect propriety and justice, are 

 separated from some others which they resemble in certain of 

 their characters, and are included in this genus, have no com- 

 mon English name ; they have been popularly called sand- 

 pipers, or snipes, or alternately the one or the other ; 

 sand-pipers, because they run about piping, in some key 

 or other, upon nearly the same ground as these birds ; and 

 snipes, because they have long bills. 



But popular names cannot be rendered accurately expres- 

 sive of those nicer shades of distinction that are required 

 when we come to discriminate, in anything like a scientific 

 manner, between the haunts and habits of one animal, and 

 those of another ; those names must always be, to a con- 

 siderable extent, local, because they are merely conventional, 

 and there can be no conventional agreement where there is 

 110 intercourse. Besides, the more minute distinctions, and 

 they are absolutely necessary in order to obtain anything 

 like a knowledge of those animals that resort chiefly to 

 uninhabited places, are not taken cognizance of by the 

 common people ; and thus similarity is confounded with 

 identity in some cases, and changes of place and of plumage 

 (which very generally occur together) are in other cases the 

 cause of one species, nay, probably one individual bird, being 

 named, and popularly considered, as two. 



The tringas have certain peculiar characters, especially of 

 the bill, and their haunts and food are, of course, in accord- 

 ance with those characters. Their bill is as long as the head, 

 or longer, slender, straight, or very slightly curved, a little 



