SHARP-TAILED STINT. 
H. acuminaUi. Not at that time questioning Sharpe’s determination, I replaced 
H. acuminata by H. aurita in my Handlist of the Birds of Australasia, p. 28, 
1908. About the same time American ornithologists, also accepting Sharpe’s 
identification, made the same alteration in the specific name, but also 
replaced Heteropygia by Pisohia, not admitting any distinction, generic or 
subgeneric, between the species Sharpe had distributed in Lunonites and 
Heteropygia. Pisohia of Billberg, 1828, had been shown to have priority 
over Limonites Kaup, 1829. Re-examining the Watling Drawings, I at once 
noted that Sharpe had simply made a mistake, and that there was no question 
about the identity of drawing No. 244, which was that of Actitis hypoleucos. 
Sharpe’s reference to H. acuminata seems to have been simply a slip, as it 
will be noted that he made no mention of the priority of aurita over 
acwninata nor the need of displacement, as he did with regard to most of 
the other names which needed emendation through his study of the Watling 
figures. I therefore at once put on record this fact {Nov. Zool., Vol. XVIII., 
p. 7, 1911), but unfortunately before that was done the third edition of the 
American Ornithological Union’s Checklist had appeared, and therein (p. 113, 
1910) appears Pisohia aurita (Latham) for this bird. 
In my “Reference List” {Nouv. Zool., Vol. XVIIL, p. 222, 1912) 
I accepted the generic Pisohia and called this form Pisohia maculata 
acuminata. 
This usage was based upon a casual examination of the specimens, 
following the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum. In Vol. XXIV. 
the species are described by Sharpe who (p. 564) fully detailed Heteropygia 
acumirmia, and then of H. maculata wrote : “ Similar to H. aciminata but 
never so rufous, with a more blackish head contrasting with the ashy-brown 
of the hind-neck. It may always be distinguished from H. acuminata by the 
greater extent of the ashy-fulvous colour, which reaches from the upper 
throat to the chest and is thickly and regularly streaked with dusky 
blackish, instead of being rufous with black spots . . . The young bird 
appears to have almost as much striping on the throat and breast as the old 
ones : in this respect it differs from the young of H. acuminata, where the 
stripes are confined to the lower-throat and sides of neck . . . There are, 
however, some specimens from British Columbia which are intermediate, and 
appear to justify Mr. Seebohm’s belief that the two species intergrade.” 
Seebohm {Geogr. Distr. Charadr., pp. 441 and 443, 1887) had given 
figures of the tails of Tringa acwninata and Tringa acwninata pectoralis, and 
these figures show each to have a regularly wedge-shaped tail. His 
conclusions read: “From each other they are much more difficult to 
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