44 
PECTORAL SANDPIPER. 
often seen, starting up from before the sportsman’s feet much in 
the manner of that bird. 
The family to which this bird belongs has been admitted by 
all authors, under various names, and comprehending more or 
less aberrant genera. It was first established by Illiger, but he 
excluded from it those which by an unimportant deviation are 
destitute of a hind toe, which he placed in his artificial family 
of Littorales, while he included in it some true Charadridae on 
account of the presence of a rudiment of this member. Vieillot 
took the same view, calling the two artificial families Helionomi , 
and jEgialites; as did Ranzani and Savi under the names of 
Limicole and Tachidrome; and Mr. Vigors erred in like manner 
by distributing the genera between his too extensive families 
of Charadriadae and Scolopacidae. The arrangement of Cuvier and 
Latreille is in this instance much more consonant to nature: 
these authors called their better composed, though still far from 
perfect family, Longirostres. 
This family, which we shall call Limicolas or Scolopacidae, is 
strictly natural, especially since we have still farther reformed it 
by withdrawing the genus Himantopus , with which we had encum¬ 
bered it in our Synopsis. The family now comprises the six 
genera JVumenius, Tringa, Totanus, Limosa, Scolopax, and Rhynchaea, 
all possessing the most marked affinity in form and habits. 
The Scolopacidae have either a moderate or generally a long 
bill, slender, feeble, and extremely soft, being partially or entirely 
covered with a nervous and sensitive skin: it is nearly cylindrical, 
and mostly obtuse at the point. Their face is completely fea¬ 
thered, and their neck of a moderate length and size. The feet, 
though rather long, are moderate and quite slender; the tarsus is 
scutellated: but the chief character which, combined with the 
bill, will always distinguish them from the allied families, consists 
in the hind toe, which is short, slender, articulated high up on the 
