2 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
[Correspondents are requested to write briefly and to the point. No attention will 
be paid to anonymous communications. 1 
The Sternum in the Solitary Sandpiper, and other Notes. 
To the Editors of the Auk : — - 
Dear Sirs: Some little time ago, while looking over several skeletons 
of the Solitary Sandpiper ( Totanus solitarius of the A. O. U check list), 
which I have in my private collection, I noticed that the sternum of this 
bird has but a single large notch on either side. Now the only two other 
allied species in our avifauna, so far as is known to me at present, thus 
constituted, are the Woodcock and Wilson’s Snipe (Gallinago delicata ) , 
and I am uncertain about the genus Macrorhamphus , as I have not, as 
yet, looked up the point in the species therein contained. Possibly, too, 
Totanus ochropus may possess a sternum with but a pair of notches in it, 
and if that be the case, I am of the opinion that the character is very likely 
to be associated with other distinguishing points in the economy of these 
two birds, of ample importance, I think, to guarantee us in restoring 
for their reception, the genus Rhyacophilus , which change I propose 
in the present connection. Such forms as Totanus flavipes and T. 
melanoleucus have the usual four-notched sternum, as is the general rule 
among Limicoline birds. 
To furnish certain comparative notes on this point, we find that 
Sir Richard Owen, in speaking of the sternum as it is found in certain 
birds of this order, says, in the second volume of his ‘Comparative Anat- 
omy and Physiology of Vertebrates,’ on page 26, that “ the woodcock 
( Scolopax ) has a pair of notches, with the outer boundary slender, and 
shorter than the broad intermediate tract, the gambets ( Totanus ), avocets, 
sandpipers {Tringa), curlews ( Nnmenius ), pratincoles ( Glareola ), have 
the foui-notched sternum. In the godwits (. Limosa , /-deltas') the medial 
notches are almost obsolete, and the lateral ones wide. The ‘thick-knees’ 
( CEdicnemus ) and bustards ( Otis) have the four-notched sternum, the 
notches being small.” 
A number of years ago I published in the ‘Journal of Anatomy’ in Lon- 
don, with plates, a memoir having much to do with the osteology of our 
American Limicolae, wherein I was enabled to confirm Professor Owen’s 
observations, and extend them by noting the ‘ four-notched sternum ’ in 
our own species of Limosa , in two species of Oyster-catcher, in Totanus 
flavipes, in several species of true Sandpipers, and in the genus Bartra- 
tnia, where I found “a small pair of inner notches in the sternum, with 
very deep outer ones.” I further went on to remark, as I have already 
stated above, that I had only found the ‘two-notched’ sternum in the 
Snipe {Gallinago delicata) of the American Limicolae that I examined on 
that occasion. Since then, as I say, I have found a similar form of the 
bone in our own Woodcock ( Philohela minor). Among taxonomists, the 
notching of the sternum has always carried with it more or less weight in 
deciding avian affinities, and I was promptly held up for my sins, for hav- 
ing published somewhere about a year ago, that I did not attach much 
weight to this character, as applied to the sterna of certain Auks, where 
the bone in the same species could be found to have a pair of notches, or a 
notch only on one side, or an absolutely notchless sternum. As we 
come among the higher groups of birds, however, this character becomes, 
as it were, more fixed, and the bone for any number of individuals of the 
same species, very much alike, and certainly the “notching” the same. 
So constant is the character that, for instance, I doubt very much that 
any one yet has discovered a sternum from a specimen of G. delicata with 
more than a pair of notches in it, while on the other hand no one can with 
certainty predict what the pattern of the xiphoidal margin of the sternum 
will be in a specimen of Uria lomvia before cutting down upon it for 
examination. Professor Owen figured the sternum of the now-supposed 
extinct Great Auk {P. impennis) with the posterior border entire to the 
bone in question. Whereas in specimens recently obtained by Mr. F. A. 
Lucas, the sterna show a pair of notches in many instances. 
Osteologically, the gap between such genera as Gallinago and Philo- 
hela, and the genus Tringa, for instance, is a wide one, for not only is 
the sternum “two-notched” in the first mentioned genera, and “four- 
notched” in Tringa, but the remaining bones of the skeletons of the com- 
pared forms are also totally different, and thus bear out the dissimilarity 
of structure suggested by the sterna. Presumably, too, were the ‘ soft 
parts’ also carefully compared, they likewise would support these differ- 
ences. Having arrived, however, at the genus Tringa, and passing up 
through the order Limicolie, as we group our birds in the A. O. U. Check 
List, we find the “four-notched” sternum a very constant character 
through it, and through the succeeding genera of Ereunetes, Calidris , 
Limosa , and, as I say, in such forms of Totanus as T. melanoleucus and 
984. Totanus solitarius at Scilly. By Thomas Cornish. Ibid., Nov 
1882, p. 432.— Taken Sept. 21, 1882. Zoologist* Y 1 
S'? 
