CHAPTER XIX. 
The Plovers, Sandpipers, Snipe, Jacanas, and Gulls — 
Orders Limicol^e and Gavle. 
The birds named above, together with certain allied forms, are all closely con¬ 
nected, but may be conveniently divided into two orders, of which the second is 
represented by the gulls and terns. Both groups agree with those treated in the 
immediately preceding chapters in having cleft (schizognathous) palates, and their 
young covered with down and active at birth. They differ, however, from all the 
preceding groups of birds in that the humerus (as shown in the figure on p. 295 of 
the third volume) is furnished with a projecting (ectepicondylar) process on the 
outer side of its lower extremity; while they are also characterised by the vertebrae 
of the back having their articular surfaces of a more or less cup-and-ball type, 
instead of saddle-shaped. In all of them the nasal apertures in the skull are slit¬ 
like (schizorhinal), 1 and in all the oil-gland is tufted, while on the upper back the 
spinal tract of feathers is forked. The whole group is a very extensive one, 
including considerably over three hundred species. 
Plovers and The plovers, snipe, sandpipers, coursers, etc., collectively con- 
Snipe. stituting the order Limicolae, are long-legged, and frequently long¬ 
billed, birds, characterised by the angle of the lower jaw being produced backwards 
and recurved, by the very general presence of basipterygoid processes on the 
rostrum of the skull, and by the feet being but seldom completely webbed, as well 
as by the absence of a certain feature connected with the bones of the wing which 
is characteristic of the gulls, and will be alluded to under that heading. 2 As a rule 
the breast-bone has two notches on its hinder border; and in some cases the third 
toe is serrated, while the third and fourth toes may be connected for some distance 
by a web, or all three front toes may have lobe-like expansions, or even a web. In 
all cases the first toe is small, and it may be elevated above the plane of the others, 
or even wanting. The wings are relatively long and pointed, with ten primary 
quills; while the tail is short, with the number of feathers variable. As a rule 
these birds undergo an autumnal and a spring moult; the young birds in their 
first plumage more or less closely resembling the adults in their summer dress. 
In their first autumn, the young begin to change into the second plumage, differing 
very little from the winter dress of the adults ; the change taking place, however, 
not by a moult, but by an actual alteration in the colour of the feathers themselves, 
although a few battered feathers may be replaced. In the succeeding spring these 
1 Except in the black-backed courser ( Pluvianus ). 
2 Mr. Beddard ( Proc, Zool. Soc., 1890, p. 339) has formulated certain characters by which the skulls of the 
group can be defined from those of the cranes and gulls, but they are too abstruse to be quoted here. 
