526 Letters, Announcements, fyc. 
passage advocates the view that genera so diverse as Chara - 
drius, Tringa, Scolopax, Tot anus, Himantopus, and Numenius 
(and, I suppose, Cursorius and Glareola) have all originated 
from one ancestral type since the middle of the Pleistocene 
period. Mr. Seebohm has evidently overlooked the palaeonto¬ 
logical evidence that exists, and a brief notice of this may be 
of interest to readers of ‘ The Ibis/ 
It is true that our knowledge of fossil birds is very limited; 
bat still something has been ascertained, and an exhaustive 
account of the information obtained up to 1871 is given by 
our eminent foreign member M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 
his ‘ Itecherches Anatomiques et Paleontologiques pour 
servir a Fhistoire des Oiseaux Fossiles de la France/ In 
this work (see ‘The Ibis/ 1869, p. 219) species of Numenius, 
Tringa, and Totanus , besides a form called Elorius, and, 
above all, a true Himantopus , are described from Miocene 
beds. A bird, referred with doubt to Numenius (N. gyp - 
sorum*?), is described from the Eocene; but this, although un¬ 
doubtedly Charadrian, was a somewhat generalized form 
intermediate between Curlews and Godwits. In America a 
genus named Palceotringa, probably Charadrian, but of which 
the affinities are doubtful, has been found in Cretaceous beds. 
Neglecting the older types, it is manifest that, so far from 
all the genera of Charadriidse having originated towards the 
end of the Glacial epoch, several of the best marked existed 
in the far more ancient Miocene period. 
In case some ornithologists should not be familiar with the 
relative importance of the geological terms used, I may per¬ 
haps be allowed to show how very great the difference is. 
Omitting all disputed terms, four principal divisions of geo¬ 
logical time are usually recognized subsequent to the com¬ 
mencement of the Tertiary era; these are, commencing from 
the earliest:—Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene. 
But these divisions, judging by the changes that took place 
in the fauna within the limits of each—by far the best test 
.—were by no means of equal duration. Eocene must have 
been nearly equal to the Miocene and Pliocene together, 
whilst each of the latter greatly exceeded the Pleistocene. 
