SPECIES 2. RECURVIROSTRJi HIMjlNTOPUS.^ 
LONG-LEGGED AVOSET. 
[Plate LVIIL— Fig. 2.] 
Long-legged Plover, Jlrct. Zool. p. 487, JVb. 405. — Turton, p. 
416. Bewick, ii, 21. — L’Echasse, B uff, viii, 114. PI. Enl.878. 
— Peale’s Museum, JVo. 4210. 
Naturalists have most unaccountably classed this bird with 
the genus Charadrius, or Plover, and yet affect to make the 
particular conformation of the bill, legs and feet, the rule of their 
arrangement. In the present subject, however, excepting the 
trivial circumstance of the want of a hind toe, there is no re- 
semblance whatever of those parts to the bill, legs or feet, of the 
Plover; on the contrary, they are so entirely different, as to 
create no small surprise at the adoption, and general acceptation, 
of a classification, evidently so absurd and unnatural. This ap- 
pears the more reprehensible, when we consider the striking 
affinity there is between this bird and the common Avoset, not 
only in the particular form of the bill, nostrils, tongue, legs, feet, 
wings and tail, but extending to the voice, manners, food, place 
of breeding, form of the nest, and even the very colour of the 
eggs of both, all of which are strikingly alike, and point out, at 
once, to the actual observer of nature, the true relationship of 
these remarkable birds. 
Strongly impressed with these facts, from an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the living subjects, in their native wilds, I have 
presumed to remove the present species to the true and proper 
place assigned it by nature; and shall now proceed to detail 
some particulars of its history. 
* This bird belongs to the genus Himmtopm of Brisson. 
