BROWN PHALAROPE. 
129 
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 par- 
ticular attention 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 cooL» 
footed tringa of Edwards, plate 46 and 143, to which 
bird Linnaeus gave the specific denomination of lobata . 
In the twelfth edition of the Systema Natures , 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 hyper - 
borea , — a specific appellation, which Temminck and 
other ornithologists have sanctioned, but which the 
laws of methodical nomenclature prohibit us from 
adopting, as, beyond all question, hyperborea is only 
a synonyme of lobata , which has the priority, and must 
stand. 
M. Temminck differs from us in the opinion that 
the T. lobata of Gmelin, vol. i, 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 confusion of synonymes, and a consequent 
confusion in his description, as, the essential character 
in both authors being nearly in the same words, ( rostro 
subulato , apice inflexo , Sfc.) we are at no loss to infer 
that both descriptions have reference to the same bird ; 
and we are certain that the lobata of the twelfth edition 
of the former is precisely the same as that of the tenth 
vol. hi. i 5 
