NEW SERIES. 



LXIII.— JULY, 



ISRALLATGRES : WADERS OR STILTED BIRDS. 



BY THE REV. W. HINCKS, F.L.S., EfC, 



JPEOBESSOa OB NATURAL HI8T0ET, UNlVESSITT COLLEGE, TOKOHTO. 



The group of birds to which our attentioa is now directed has 

 ^always been distinguished by naturalists and has been as little uncer- 

 tain as to its limits as almost any leading division. It was marked 

 out by Belon in the first attempt at a natural ornithological system 

 produced in 1555, and has in some form been retained by all his 

 successors. In truth, the birds of prey, the game and poultry birds, 

 the waders, and the swimmers with the perching hirds have almost 

 always been recognized as orders, and the only question respecting 

 the climbers has been whether they constituted a distinct order or 

 ought to be accounted a suborder of perching birds. Other leading 

 divisions occasionally proposed by writers of eminence are either 

 founded on somewhat insulated families, or are artificially defined and 

 founded on intermediate forms which there is no real difficulty in. 

 reducing under one or other of the orders above enumerated. One 

 of the systems most copious in its divisions is that of the celehrated 

 Temminck who gives no less than 16 orders of birds, hut no less than 

 half of these are but divisions of perching birds, three of these con» 



Vol.. XI. K 



