PECTORAL SANDPIPER. 439 
nearly cylindrical, and mostly obtuse at the point. Their 
face is completely feathered, and their neck of a moderate 
length and size. The feet, though rather long, are moderate 
and quite slender; the tarsus is scutellated: but the chief 
character which, combined with the bill, will always distin- 
cuish them from the allied families, consists in the hind toe, 
which is short, slender, articulated high up on the tarsus, 
and the tip hardly touching the ground: in some quite 
typical species this toe is entirely wanting, and this fact cor- 
roborates what we have so often repeated in our writings, that 
the mode of insertion, or use made of this toe is of more 
importance than its being absent or present. In all the 
Iimicole the wings are elongated, falciform, acute, and 
tuberculated ; and the tail rather short. 
The females are generally larger than the males, but, luckily 
for naturalists, similar to them in colour. I say luckily, for 
as the young differ greatly from the adults, and as the moult 
which takes place twice a year produces additional changes 
in the confused plumage of most of these birds, sexual diver- 
sity, if it existed, would render the species still more difficuit 
to determine. 
All the Scolopacide inhabit marshy, muddy places, and 
around waters; and never alight on trees. On the ground 
they run swiftly. Their food consists of insects, worms, mol- 
lusca, and other aquatic animals, which they seek in the mud, 
feeling and knowing where to seize their prey without seeing 
it, by means of the delicacy of touch of their bill. They are 
monogamous; breed on the ground in grassy marshes, or on 
the sand ; and lay mostly four pyriform eges, both parents 
sitting upon them, and afterwards attending their young with 
care, though these latter leave the nest, run about, and pick 
up food as soon ashatched. All these habits contrast strongly 
with those of the ibis, which can only be forced into this 
family on account of the softness of the bill, and its great 
similarity to that of the curlews. 
Our genus Zringa is much more extensive than that of 
