tarsus, and the tip hardly touching the ground: in some quite 
typical species this toe is entirely wanting, and this fact corrobo¬ 
rates what we have so often repeated in our writings, that the 
H * mode of insertion, or use made of this toe is of more importance 
than its being absent or present. In all the Limicolse, the wings 
are elongated, falciform, acute and tuberculated; and the tail 
rather short. 
The females are generally larger than the males, but luckily 
for naturalists, similar to them in colour. I say luckily, for as 
the young differ greatly from the adults, and as the moult which 
takes place twice a year produces additional changes in the 
confused plumage of most of these birds, sexual diversity, if it 
existed, would render the species still more difficult to determine. 
All the Scolopacidse inhabit marshy, muddy places, and around 
waters; and never alight on trees. On the ground they run 
swiftly. Their food consists of insects, worms, mollusca, and 
other aquatic animals, which they seek in the mud, feeling and 
knowing where to seize their prey without seeing it, by means of 
the delicacy of touch of their bill. They are monogamous; 
breed on the ground in grassy marshes, or on the sand; and la^ 
mostly four pyriform eggs, both parents sitting upon them, and 
afterwards attending their young with care, though these latter 
leave the nest, run about, and pick up food as soon as hatched. 
All these habits contrast strongly with those of the Ibis, which 
can only be forced into this family on account of the softness of 
the bill, and its great similarity to that of the Curlews. 
Our genus Tringa is much more extensive than that of most 
modern, though much less so than that of former writers, for we 
arrange in it all the Scolopctcidae, whose bill, short, or moderately 
so, straight or slightly curved, is soft or flexible for its whole 
length, and with the point smooth, depressed, somewhat dilated 
and obtuse; not taking into consideration the feet, especially the 
VOL. iv .—m 
