BROWN PHALAROPE. 
233 
proved that the seven species of authors constituted, in effect, only 
two species. 
Teinminck’s distinctive characters are drawn from the bill ; 
and he has divided the genus into two sections, an ari’angement of 
which the utility is not evident, seeing that each section contains 
but one species ; unless we may consider 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 atten- 
tion 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 ; notwithstanding, by 
a diligent study of it, I have been enabled to ascertain that it is 
the Coot-footed Tringa of Edwards, pi. 46, and 143, to which bird 
Linnseus gave the specific denomination of lobata, as will be seen 
in the synonymes at the head of this article. In the twelfth edi- 
tion of the Systema Naturae, the Swedish naturalist, conceiving 
that he might have been in error, omitted, in his description of the 
lobata, the synonyme of Edwards’s Cock Coot-footed Tringa, No. 
143, and recorded the latter bird under the name of hijperborea, a 
specific appellation which Temminck and other ornithologists have 
sanctioned, but which the laws of methodical nomenclature pro- 
hibit us from adopting, as, beyond all question, hyperborea is only 
a synonyme of lobata, which has the priority, and must stand. 
Mr. Temminck differs from us in the opinion that the T, lo- 
bata of Gmelin, vol. 1, p. 674, is the present species, and refers it 
to that which follows. But if this respectable ornithologist will 
take the trouble to look into the twelfth edition of Linnaeus, vol. I, 
p. 249, No. 8, he will there find two false references, Edwards’s 
No. 308, and Brisson’s No. 1, which gave rise to Gmelin’s confu- 
VOL. IX. 3 ^ 
B, M ErmhAtiT, 
WedtCke^te? Ho.. 
•ft ItSHtiM 
Jfot to be on ‘•.<4 CoTulu 
