EHYNCHjEA. 



455 



name of Rosfratida may be rejected on the ground that its author himself rejected it and 

 adopted the name of Cuvier, not improbably because Vieillot knew that Cuvier's name was 

 the older one, and subsequent researches may prove that it had been published in some 

 earlier work than the first edition of the 'Regne Animal.' 



The Common Painted Snipe (Rhyncliaa capensis), being the "Becassine de Madagascar" 

 of Buffon, which was designated by Vieillot as the type of his new genus, must be regarded 

 as such. 



Special 

 pleading to 

 excuse it. 



Determina- 

 tion of the 

 type. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 

 Ethiopian Region. ■. 



> R. CAPENSIS. 



Oriental Region, j 



Australian Region. 



Continental Australia. R. australis. 



Neotropical Region. 



Southern half. R. semicollaris. 



The genus Rhynchaa can scarcely be regarded as Tropical, inasmuch as none of the Climatic dis- 

 three species which it contains is exclusively tropical during the breeding-season. They tnbutl0n - 

 are distributed as follows : — 



Temperate South America 1 



Temperate and Tropical Africa and 



Tropical Asia 1 



Temperate and Tropical Australia ... 1 



Species of Rlujncluza . . — 3 



The Painted Snipes appear to be the descendants of a party of Waders which 

 abandoned their migratory habits before the Post-Pliocene Glacial Epoch, and settled in 

 India, where they probably resided until that Peninsula became overcrowded by birds 

 driven south by the freezing up of the breeding-grounds by the continually increasing 

 Arctic ice. In consequence of the severity of the struggle for existence caused by the 

 suddenly increased pressure of population, one party of emigrants appear to have crossed 

 the tropics to Australia, whilst a second party joined the great band of emigrants which 

 succeeded in crossing the Pacific to South America. During the warm period which 

 followed the last of the series of invasions by arctic cold the great pressure was removed 

 by the return of most of the glacial emigrants to their old homes ; and the Painted Snipe 

 appears to have increased and multiplied in its old Indian home to such a degree that it 



