Genus— ANT E L I 0 TR IN G A, nov. 
Type Totanus tenuirostris Horsfield. 
Medium, stoutly-built Waders with long straight bills, long wings, short tails 
and short stout legs, and strong feet. 
The bill is long, straight, and fairly stout : it is however proportionately 
more slender than that of Canutus, with which genus it has been confused ; 
the nostrils are very long, and the tip is less expanded than in Canutus ; 
the culmen is longer than the metatarsus. 
The wings are long and narrow with the first primary longest. The tail 
is short and square, somewhat emarginate, about one-third the length of the 
wing. The metatarsus is stout and short, noticeably shorter than the culmen, 
and about half as long again as the toes. The middle and hind toe are short 
and strong. 
Though this species has been classed as congeneric with Canutus canutus^ 
I consider their relationship to be somewhat remote, as their summer-plumages 
differ so widely. The minute differences in the bill- characters seem to indicate 
a similar case of convergence, as is seen in Pelidna and Erolia. As confirmation 
I would cite the following : Harting, in the Proc. Zool. Soc. (Lend.) 1874, 
p. 242 et seq., gave figures on pi. XL. of the bfil, feet, and tail of this species 
under the name Tringa crassirostris, and wrote: “ In T. crassirostris (plate XL., 
fig. 7) the bill is unusually deep at the base, and laterally much compressed ; 
the wings long with broad and powerful flight-feathers ; the tail (fig. 9) 
almost square ; the tibia for some portion of its length bare ; the tarsus (fig. 8) 
longer than the middle toe ; the toes comparatively short, stout, and well- 
margined, as in Tringa canutus* while the nails are long and curved. 
* Several naturahsts who have met with T. crassirostris for the first time 
— as Messrs. Hume, Swinhoe, Blakiston, and others — have fikened it, from its 
robust size, to the Knot, T. canutus ; and Mr. Swinhoe has named it the 
Chinese Knot. There can be little doubt, however, from the character of 
its seasonal changes of plumage, as weU as from certain similarities of 
structure, that its affinities are with the Dunhn, T. alpinaP 
* 
274 
