340 
LONG-LEGGED AVOSET. 
LONG-LEGGED AVOSET RECURVIROSTRA 
HIMANTOPUS Plate LVIIL Fig. 2. 
Long-legged Plover, Arct. Zool. p. 487, No. 405 Turton, p. 416 Bewick , ii. 
21. — L’Echasse, Buff. viii. 114, PI. enl. 878 Peale's Museum, No. 4210. 
HIMANTOPUS N1GRICOLLIS Vieillot.* 
Himantopus Mexicanus, Orel's Edit, of Wils. — Himantopus nigricollis, Bonap. 
Synop. p. 322. 
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 resemblance 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 appears 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 
* Wilson confounded this species with the Long Legged Plover of Europe, 
and ranged it with the Avosets. Mr Ord, in his reprint, placed it in the genus 
Himantopus , properly established for these birds, but under the name Mexicanus. 
The Prince of Musignano is of opinion, that it cannot range under this, being 
much smaller, and refers it to the H. nigricollis of Vieillot. The genus con- 
tains only a few species, all so closely allied, that near examination is necessary 
to distinguish them. They are all remarkable for the great disproportion of 
their legs — Ed. 
