and never on the borders ofriversor marshes : henee he halls it
field Gwlewy Chmlito champetre. ,
, At HndiSonis Bay this-C-urlewmakes its. uppearanceearlyin
May* onmihg^l'orn the southand' going further north, returning
again to Albany Fort;in August : it remains there till September,
when, it departs fer ithe south. ft ifseomrapn in Maine and’MoVa
Scotia during the. months of.October and November, and still more
:S® a.t-]^£wfoundknd', We have'received -it from Maine, and from
Prairie du-Ghien in Michigan, and have occasionally met with it
also-in the(markets of -blew-Iforkjand,Philadelphia;: in the middle
States; howevecrit is by no means common, having escaped the
industrious Wikon. ' This fact proves that ourCurlew is fqnd of
extremely remote regions, without remaining for any length'* o3f
time jn the intervening emmtries betwe<m its winter and summer
residences* They eolleefe in small flocks of from-ten to twenty^
and when starting on the. wing utter a ery resembling bibi; this
whistling note may be heard at a distance* The Esquimaux
;,Giiriew lays fam eggSj and keeps in flocks composed of young
and .®ldr 4,ogether ^ they feed ; much on the berries of Empetrum
>i2^«TO, whieh‘ imparts to their flesh a delicate flavour. i
It has been Jthe lot of all the species of Curlews to be wantonly
confounded with each other: only two were reckoned as European,
and in them were merged as identical the three American. The
Imgirostris'was, first .definitively; disunitedfrom the arquata by
Wilson. «iVieillot unaccountably- confounded as one two very
diffierent .«pe&ies,,giving it more th an ‘one name, however, The
'huds&nicus, though correctly-described by Latham, was referred by
all writers, including Temminck, to the European WhiMbtet,0 k
phkopus, The present (toe he forbore, through extreme caution,
to unite also with it, observing that it might be a real species, or
at le a sts constant variety. But when the bird actually fell- into
Ms hands, he called his specimens» which:,wcr©/.from South A‘feerica‘,
Numenius bremrostris, not recognising in them the JV. borealis
of Latham.
Although we.call this bird Esquimaux' Curlewy it would perhaps .
be better to condeminnHls name altOghthêf, and. give this one the
really appropriate name/of Short-billed Curlew^ although this a!s
well as the .former appellation,‘has been misapplied. As for the
'legitimate' sc ie n c e name, this- also blight %© disputed. Borealis
was first giveiit bysf^rmolin t®. the Hadsdnian Curlew, but «as he
called them Seólopasc^Cihaifc t tó appellation :
of Latham/who SÏ adtiiirably c^ebt^^^fi''%^pe‘öb fd¥the'ïUurïews,
being only wrong perhaps* in the; choice of the name, and certgmly
in the citation of Gmelin. As for Temminc,k, in declaring that
the new spacing-of Lichtensteinfddffers essentially from Latham’s
N.b&realis,. (a fact which was doubted by the- accurate German
himself,) he must have (had in view our JV. hudsmicus^ Lath.;* fthe
Spolopg^ borealis ofGnatelin: . ■
i We can ferm no - opinion
supposed ,new%Onrlewfrom thediagntosis
is certainly inconclusive, not embracing the essential characters ;
awd establishcs tno difference1 bet^etó «Éi and N.i hudsomcus', of
which it also has the sine.
Aphe * JV. madagascariensis of ■ species of
Numenius peculiar to Southern Africa and Oceaniea, allied to the
arquata and longirostris: it is figured én the pl. enlv 1©§ o f Buffon.
We d o n o t know either N . wrgatus? or N . lineatus: of Cuyier, but
one of them at all events will havd to be referred to the madagascariensis.