YOUNG SEMIPALMATED PLOVER. 93 
The distinctions between the three European species of Ring- 
Plovers having been until lately but little understood, it is not to 
be wondered at if those inhabiting these States were not at once 
well established: North America counts also three, independently 
of the Kildeer, and several others not yet properly determined 
inhabit other parts of the world. 
Being now regarded as a new and very distinct species, we 
have not hesitated to reproduce of its natural size a bird that 
Wilson has already represented reduced one half; but his figure 
of the adult being remarkably good, we have thought it best to 
give the young, with the subjoined description, referring the 
reader for other particulars to the accurate account of our prede¬ 
cessor. 
The Young Semipalmated Plover is seven inches long, and 
fourteen in extent: the bill is almost entirely black, being destitute 
of orange, and with no more than a little dirty yellowish flesh- 
colour at the base of the under mandible. The frontlet, continued 
into the lora, and dilating broadly on the auriculars, is of a 
darkish gray colour, somewhat tinged with brown: a frontal band 
obscurely continued over the eyes is white ; there is no sincipital 
black band: the top of the head is grayish brown down to the 
neck, which colour unites and forms a single mass with the 
auriculars already described : the throat to the very origin of the 
bill, and all the under parts, are pure white, with the exception 
of a collar on the breast, which, as a continuation of the colour of 
the back, is of a brownish gray: the white encroaches somewhat 
upon the middle of this collar on the lower side ; and extends in 
a broad ring all round the neck: after this collar, the whole upper 
parts of the body are brownish gray, precisely of the same hue as 
the top of the head, and like it have each feather slightly edged 
with pale. The wings are four and three quarter inches long, 
exactly reaching the tip of the tail, the smaller and middle coverts 
VOL. iv .—a a 
