SCHINZ’S SANDPIPER. 
71 
The specimens that we shot in New Jersey measured seven 
inches in length and above fourteen in extent. The bill is very 
nearly but not quite an inch long, compressed and black from the 
base : the crown, neck above, and interscapulary region are of an 
ashy-brown, much darker in the centre of each feather and 
lighter on their margins ; on the lower portion of their back this 
darker color widening, predominates, and becomes black, so that 
the tips of the feathers only are of the general pale ashy color; 
the upper tail-coverts are white, blackish along the shaft and 
towards the margin of the outer vane : a whitish stripe runs from 
the very origin of the bill over each eye ; the cheeks, sides of the 
neck and breast are whitish streaked with ashy dusky, along the 
shaft of the feathers, giving these parts an obscurely lineated 
appearance, the throat quite to the bill, and all the remaining 
under parts are white, the bottom of the plumage being plum¬ 
beous, and a few bands of that color appearing across the lower 
flank feathers. The wings are four inches and a quarter long, 
with the tertials and scapularies remarkably tapering and acumi¬ 
nate, shorter by a good inch than the two first quill-feathers : all 
the wing-coverts are of the color of the body, but a little darker, 
each having a pale gray margin, the inner great coverts have a 
very pure white tip : the shafts of all the quill feathers are pure 
white at least for a good portion near the centre : the primaries 
are blackish ash: the secondaries paler and margined with 
whitish, the tertials are again blackish edged with pale grayish : 
the under surface of the wing is of a silvery gray; the under 
wing-coverts white marbled with dusky. The tail is two and a 
quarter inches long: the four lateral feathers each side are very 
nearly equal in length, of a pale ash color margined and shafted 
with white : they become gradually darker as they are nearer the 
centre, the fifth each side is blackish ash, a trifle longer than 
those already described, and has a very conspicuous pure white 
