90 BROWN PHALAROPE, 
in the State of New York. On referring to Wilson’s Journal, 
I found an account of the bird, there called a tringa, written 
with a lead pencil, but so scrawled and obscured, that parts 
of the writing were not legible. I wrote to Mr Trowbridge 
soliciting a particular description, but no answer was returned. 
However, having had the good fortune, since publishing the 
first edition, of examining a fine recent specimen of this rare 
bird, I hope I shall be enabled to fix the species by such 
characters as will prevent any ornithologist in future from 
confounding it with the species which follows ;—two birds 
which, owing to a want of precision, were involved in almost 
inextricable confusion, until Temminck applied himself to the 
task of disembroiling them ; and this ingenious naturalist has 
fully proved that the seven species of authors constituted in 
effect only two species. 
T’emminck’s distinctive characters are drawn from the bill ; 
and he has divided the genus into two sections—an arrange- 
ment of which the utility is not evident, seeing that each sec- 
tion contains but one species, unless we may consider that the 
barred phalarope of Latham constitutes a third, a point not 
yet ascertained, and not easy to be settled, for the want of 
characters. 
In my examination of these birds, I have paid particular 
attention to the feet, which possess characters equally striking 
with those of the bill; hence, a union of all these will afford 
a facility to the student, of which he will be fully sensible 
when he makes them the subject of his investigation. 
Our figure of this species betrays all the marks of haste ; it 
is inaccurately drawn, and imperfectly coloured ; notwith- 
standing, by a diligent study of it, I have been enabled to 
ascertain that it is the coot-footed tringa of Edwards, plate 46 
and 143, to which bird Linnzeus gave the specific denomina- 
tion of lobata, as will be seen in the synonyms at the head of 
this article. In the twelfth edition of the “Systema Nature,” 
the Swedish naturalist, conceiving that he might have been 
in error, omitted, in his description of the lobata, the syno- 

