CHAEADE1US. 



171 



* * 



Subc/eneric group 2Egialoy>hili minores. 

 ttt Nearctic and Neotropical Species. 



■*.(■ -% % , 



CHARADRIUS CANTIANUS NIVOSUS, 



AMERICAN KENTISH PLOVER. 



Charadrius cantianus loris albis : pedibus pallidis. 



Diagnosis. 



Charadkitjs cantianus is very distinct from Charadrius nivosus. The Eurasian species is Variations. 

 a larger bird, with a longer bill and longer and blacker legs, darker lores, and darker 

 upper parts generally than its American ally. The ranges of the two species do not 

 approach within seven thousand miles of each other, so that there can scarcely be any 

 possibility of interbreeding between the two races. Nevertheless it is possible to find 

 small pale-legged and pale-lored birds in China, which, when compared with large dark- 

 legged, dark-lored birds from California, would not merely be not distinguishable, but 

 would be unhesitatingly referred to the wrong species if judged by their merits instead of 

 their nationality. Under these circumstances it seems to me impossible to regard them as 

 more than subspecifically distinct, though the areas of their distribution are not only 

 not continuous, but separated by a chasm nearly eight thousand miles across. 



iEgialitis nivosa, Baird, Cassin, <Sf Lawrence, Birds N. Amer. p. 696 (1858). 

 iEgialitis cantianus, var. nivosus, Coues, Check-list N. Am. B. p. 135 (1873). 

 iEgialitis alexandrina nivosa (Cassin), Baird, Brewer, §■ Ridgway, Water-Birds N. Amer. i. 

 p. 164(1884). 



z2 



Synonymy. 



