WILSON’ S PHALAROPE. 457 
their top, but are never known to dive: they notwithstanding 
swim with perfect ease, when they have all the appearance 
of a miniature duck, with their head carried close to their back. 
While swimming, they dip their bill often in the water, fre- 
quently turning round, with much elegance in all their motions. 
Their flight is rapid. Their flesh is oily and unpalatable. 
The abode of these diminutive swimmers is the arctic and 
polar regions, to which their thick coat of feathers is well 
adapted. Hence they migrate in autumn to the temperate 
regions of both continents, where they are also seen in spring. 
They are essentially arctic birds, and breed in the most 
northern parts of the world, and although they retire 
more to the south in winter, yet their visits to our tem- 
perate climates are rare and casual. From such a com- 
bination of traits as are above related, it will be evident 
that, though much restricted in the number of species, the 
phalaropes are entitled to a conspicuous rank in classification. 
They can only be compared with the allied genera Himan- 
topus and Lecurvirostra, and we see how materially they 
differ from them. They may be said to connect the Scolo- 
pacide with the Laride, forming a beautiful link between 
the order of waders and that of the webfooted birds. 
Our subgenus Holopodius, which resembles Lobzpes in the 
bill, while Crymophilus resembles it in the feet, is furnished 
with a long, very slender, smooth, flexible, and cylindrical bill, 
of equal breadth throughout, subulate to the tip, with the 
point narrow, sharp, and slightly curved: the nostrils are 
quite basal, and linear-elongated: the tongue is filiform and 
acute. ‘The tarsi are elongated, and much compressed, in 
which it comes nearer to the ANsERES, and compensates for 
the other traits which remove it further from them than the 
other phalaropes. Thus do we find ourselves baffled in all 
attempts at a regularly symmetrical or mathematical arrange- 
ment. Nature acknowledges no artificial nor contracted limits. 
The toes are long, and by no means semipalmated, the outer 
being connected to the middle only as far as the first joint, 
