The family Thinocoridæ, which embraces the two genera _Thinocorus_ and _Attagis_, is a peculiar group of South-American birds of somewhat Partridge-like appearance, and associated by the older authors with the Gallinæ, but now known to be most nearly allied in essential structure to the Plovers. The Seed-Snipes are inhabitants of bare and desolate districts, being found in the northern parts of the continent only on the high Andes, but descending to the sea-level in Patagonia and the Falkland Islands. The species are few in number, only about six being known, of which two occur within Argentine limits. 393. THINOCORUS RUMICIVORUS, Eschsch. (COMMON SEED-SNIPE.) +Thinocorus rumicivorus+, _Burm. La-Plata Reise_, ii. p. 501 (Rosario); _Scl. et Salv. Nomencl._ p. 144; _iid. P. Z. S._ 1868, p. 143 (Buenos Ayres); _Durnford, Ibis_, 1877, p. 42 (Chupat) et p. 197 (Buenos Ayres), et 1878, p. 403 (Centr. Patagonia); _Tacz. Orn. Pér._ iii. p. 283. _Description._--Above buffy brown, marbled and irregularly banded with black; wing-feathers black, edged with white, external secondaries like the back; tail black, broadly tipped with white, central rectrices like the back: beneath white; a broad line on each side of the throat uniting in the centre of the neck and expanding into a collar on the breast black; sides of neck greyish; bill dark brown; feet yellow; claws black: whole length 6·5 inches, wing 3·9, tail 1·9. _Female_: above like the male: beneath white, sides of neck and breast brown varied with blackish, with slight traces only of the black bar. _Hab._ Western Peru, Bolivia, Chili, Patagonia, and Argentina. This curious bird has the grey upper plumage and narrow, long, sharply-pointed wings of a Snipe, with the plump body and short strong curved beak of a Partridge. But the gallinaceous beak is not in this species correlated, as in the Partridges, with stout rasorial feet; on the contrary, the legs and feet are extremely small and feeble, and scarcely able to sustain the weight of the body. When alighting the Seed-Snipe drops its body directly upon the ground and sits close like a Goatsucker; when rising it rushes suddenly away with the wild hurried flight and sharp scraping alarm-cry of a Snipe. It is exclusively a vegetable-feeder. I have opened the gizzards of many scores to satisfy myself that they never eat insects, and have found nothing in them but seed (usually clover-seed) and tender buds and leaves mixed with minute particles of gravel.