356 WILSON'S PHALAROPE. 



discovered by "Wilson, wlio, had he lived to publish the species himself, 

 would doubtless have fixed it on the same firm basis as in other instances 

 of the kind. But death put an end to his labors, and to the advantage 

 ■which science daily realized from them, when among other important 

 materials this Phalarope remained in his portfolio. It became the tast 

 of friendship to publish a few rough notes and unfinished sketches, the 

 present among the rest, and a figure was thus produced impossible to be 

 recognised except upon actual reference to the specimen itself. The 

 description which accompanied it was as defective as the figure, the 

 author's pencil notes having been found partly illegible, and it was 

 marked by him as a Tringa. In a second and much improved edition, 

 which it has pleased the author to call an original work, though the 

 plates are identical with the former, Mr. Ord's description and personal 

 observations are very correct and ingenious, but the name and syno- 

 nymes are altogether misapplied, through his mistaking it for the Phor 

 laropus hyperhoreus. In a paper published in the Annals of the Lyceum 

 of New York, I availed myself of the first opportunity that offered to 

 explain the confusion respecting the three species, and finally distin- 

 guished among them three groups which were exemplified in my 

 Synopsis. 



Mr. Sabine was not aware when he applied to this bird the name 

 of our predecessor, that he was performing not merely an act of 

 courtesy and respect, but one of justice also towards its first discoverer. 

 It was only by actual inspection of the specimen examined by Wilson, 

 and preserved in the Albany Museum, that we could identify the 

 species, and it does not appear surprising to us that some who have 

 not thus verified the fact for themselves should still express doubts, 

 as Baron Cuvier has done by implication in the new edition of his 

 Eigne Animal. We ourselves, when we first procured the bird, had 

 not the least suspicion that it was contained in Wilson's work. Every 

 one will therefore be sensible of the propriety of publishing a new 

 figure, more needed in fact in this case than if the species had been 

 new. The description in Sabine's Appendix to Franklin's Expedition 

 could not however be misunderstood, and Temminck and Vieillot by 

 its perusal would have spared this bird two synonymes, as they simul- 

 taneously figured and described it in their respective works under the 

 dilferent names quoted in our list, though "Vieillot perceived it to be 

 the species intended by Wilson. The authors of the Illustrations of 

 Ornithology did not recognise in their Lobipes incanus the young of 

 this, which is not much to be wondered at ; but it is rather extraordi- 

 nary that writers so justly scrupulous about the rights of priority should 

 adopt, though greatly posterior, Temminck's name instead of Sabine's, 

 thus slighting over one of the best of the few positive zoological labors 



