comes to us about the same time as the cuckoo. Our usual name for it, however, is based on a peculiar action that it has : it is called the wryneck, from its way of quickly twisting its neck. In places it is called the 'snake-bird,' and sometimes this local name is referred to the same origin as our usual English name for it-as if its swift twisting of the head had something about it that is snake-like. However, I rather misdoubt this. It may be called so more probably, perhaps, from the snake-like hiss which the bird gives when any foe comes to the door of the hole in the tree down which it has made its nest. It has this note in common with other nesters down holes, such as the tits, and it is hardly to be doubted that this has been developed as a settled habit of sound because of the immunity it must give to those who have it at command from the visits of troublesome acquaintances, such as weasels, for instance. If a weasel comes to a hole in a tree and, looking in, is greeted with a hiss, he has a store of inherited experience to induce him to say 'Hullo! Snakes!' and to withdraw from investigating further. But let us not infer marvellous intelligence on the part of those that make the sibilant utterance, or conclude that they imitate the snake in order to keep off the weasel. That is the kind of human psychology which may try to read purposeful reasoning into the actions of animals that do not reason, as we understand the word, and thereby darken counsel.

But though our common parlance has a name for this birdwhether wryneck or cuckoo's mate-which is based on its habits and not on its voice, it is otherwise with its classical history. In scientific ornithology it is Yunx torquilla, with the second name giving recognition to its 'wry-necking trick,' but its first an admirable imitation of the bird's call. It is less exact in the monosyllabic pronunciation which we should give it in our rendering of the Latin, but if we go a little farther back we find it appearing in the Greek classical writings, and there the 'Y' is separated from the final syllable in the pronunciation. The first syllable is indicated by an iota in the Greek; and if we pronounce this as those old Greeks probably pronounced it (I know, but do not heed, that I am here rushing in where angels fear to tread), just as a Scot would pronounce the first 'i' in 'idiot,' making it 'eediot,' then, giving to the final syllable a sound which is better suggested by writing it oonx,' with the weird-looking word 'ee-oonx' we get something that is really quite suggestive (certainly more so than the less ferocious looking 'yunx') of the curious and not very melodious cry of the bird.

We have spoiled some of what were originally very fair indications, so far as words can give them, of bird-names taken from their notes, by the spelling of them which has become stereotyped. Thus 'peewit' is the accepted way of spelling the alternative name -the name taken from its cry-of the lapwing or green plover, the bird which lays the 'plover's eggs.' Now and then we see it spelt pee-weet,' but when a writer gives it so he generally puts inverted commas on each side, which he does not trouble to do when he writes peewit, as if to say 'you might think that I am so ignorant that I do not know that peewit is the right spelling; but I do-look at the commas. Pee-weet is only a kind of joke.' It is certainly a better joke than peewit. Better still is the Scottish version of it -peesweep. Even the French dix-huit suggests the cry with some accuracy. And is there not that legend of Tyrwhit for the name of the soldier lying wounded and being saved by attention drawn to his case by the lapwings saying 'Tyrwhit' around him?

Doubtless in these imitations much must depend on the individual ear of the human being who hears them and tries to write them. Personally it has ever been a wonder to me how any man of normal hearing can find anything remotely like the voice of the wild goose suggested by the word 'honk'; yet that is, no doubt, how it jumps to the ear of many, for writers write it so, and it is accepted. If I were to go looking for a bird which appeared to me to say honk,' it would be a wild-goose chase indeed.

In some places they call the chaffinch a 'fink,' and there are those who find in this word only another form of finch,' as if the chaffinch, being the commonest of all finches, might be called by the generic name, rather as the sparrow, the commonest of all birds, is called bird-for that is all that sparrow means-pajaro (Spanish), passer domesticus-the domestic bird-and a sore trial at that. But the word 'fink 'does suggest to me, and, I think, to most people, so accurately the monosyllabic note of the chaffinch that it is hardly possible not to suppose that those are right who trace the name to the note. Other finches are named from the colour, as goldfinch, or from the form, as bullfinch, and so on, and one of the best names—a general one—is that of 'chiff-chaff,' unmistakably from the little bird's note.

A local name which has troubled me much is one that is given in North Devon, and probably in Devon universally and elsewhere too, to the water-wagtail-' dish-washer.' What is the meaning of this? Certainly (I think it is safe to say certainly) not from the

note. But from its habits? Yes. Though it cannot be said to wash dishes literally, we may see its possible association with the process if we figure to ourselves the manner in which their dishes are washed by the folk who gave the name to the bird. Devon is a land of little streamlets, and beside the little streamlets cottages are frequent, and if you live in a cottage you do not, as a rule, find yourself equipped with a nice scullery sink and a tap of water to turn on to the dirty dish. The obvious thing to do is to take the plates and dishes down to the stream, hold them in the clear bustling water, and so, of its own gravitating force, the water will wash all your dishes for you. The process is simple. And when the waterwagtail, being a frequenter of the streams, and paying constant attention to the aquatic insect life in any case, perceives this washing of dishes going on-his experience having led him to associate it with certain choice morsels afloat in the water-he is quite sure, if he be anywhere on hand, to come and see whether there be some good luck for him in the flotsam which is going down the stream. That, I take it, is how he has come by his name among these people who wash their dishes in the rippling brook. If he is not an active dish-washer himself, he is at least a frequent and interested attendant on the process. That is quite enough to account sufficiently for his name.

It has been left for the Americans, perhaps, to achieve the greatest triumph in the way of bird-naming according to the note of the bird as it strikes the human ear. The whip-poor-Will' is a better suggestion in words of a bird's call than any other that I know, and it carries too, as we think of the suffering of 'Will,' the unfortunate whipping-boy,' just that suggestion of pathos and also of quaintness which the bird's note carries. All that subtle kind of suggestion helps the name immensely, but at the same time the three rather absurd monosyllables do give a wonderful imitation of the avine call. The whip-poor-Will' is a very near cousin of our own 'night-jar,' as we call him sometimes with better significance than that of his alternative name, based on a habit which never was his, of 'goat-sucker.' No doubt the 'jar' by night is intended to convey an idea of the bird's note, which is generally written chur,' and perhaps this could not easily be improved on.

"Yaffle' is distinctly a good local name of the loud-laughing bird, the green woodpecker. He does not precisely appear to say 'yaffle,' but the word carries a vague suggestion of his note's sound. 'Woodpecker,' of course, gives his most striking habit its right place.

Whether 'jay' is a name derived from the bird's note I hardly know, but I should guess it to be so, in whatever language it had its origin at first. The corvines are rather apt to take their names from their hoarse voices. Jack '-daw is, obviously, the daw that says 'Jack.' And 'daw' again is doubtless from his call, so that he is also the Jack that says 'daw.' The fact that two words spelt so differently can both indicate the note shows how arbitrary it all is. The biggest of the whole corvine family, chief of the tribe as he might be called, the raven, no doubt derives his name from a Scandinavian source, as it is rather proper he should, seeing that he is a bird of the North and an ensign which was adopted by some of the Norsemen, especially when they went a-viking. And the nearer you come to the Scandinavian way of saying the name, the more guttural raucousness you give, the closer you arrive at a reproduction of the bird's croak. 'Rook,' similarly pronounced, seems quite as like the call of that black robber as the more stereotyped 'caw,' or the 'crow' which gives the name to his nearest cousin. Trace that back to 'corvus,' if you please, and you have the nursery caw' again. I hardly know where we get the 'mag' from in the compound magpie '-probably it is just a piece of friendly familiarity-but the 'pie' of this motley bird is one of the names which jumps to the eye, so that it cannot possibly be missed.

It is an unfortunate but a necessary admission of the futility of our written words in the suggestion of sound that so large a majority of the birds which we have named from their call are those which have an unmusical, often a rasping note. We have no difficulty in finding a name for the 'corn-crake,' which suggests in its first syllable the habits of the bird, and in the second (Latin, crex) the quality of its voice-not strictly of melodious or soft accent-but we have not aimed, and wisely, at naming such songsters as the skylark, nightingale, or thrush by words which attempt the expression of their voice and notes. The whip-poorWill' perhaps is the longest of all names which have this origin, but we are generally most successful with the names of birds whose note is a monosyllable. Certain little strings of words, or a sentence, we find here and there invented to express an imitation, such as ‘A little bit of bread and no cheese,' for the often repeated melody which the yellow-hammer gives us, but it is too long for common use as the name of the bird. We give to a certain large family of birds the descriptive name of warblers, but this contains no attempt

at reproducing the warble. It is descriptive, purely. The barking bird is again merely descriptive, though so aptly that Charles Darwin declares it impossible not to believe that the voice is that of a little dog; but still it makes no attempt at imitation. The case of those which we name chats '-stone-chat, whin-chat, wood-chat-is of course otherwise: the 'chat' gives a distinct and quite good suggestion of the note of the birds, the first syllable indicating their respective habitats. In the classic story, when the London street singer began his sentimental ditty of ' I would I were a bird,' and the ribald street-boy shouted at him,' Which yer wasa reg'lar howl,' the candid critic seems to have supposed that by the addition of the aspirate (always achieved with effort and with triumph by those of his kind) he was indicating quite a different idea from that which the unaspirated owl would convey. And so he was, no doubt, so far as the impression given to his audience was concerned, but etymologically there is not the distinction. The two are the same whether with the aspirate or without- owl' or 'howl-both from the ulula-so that when we go a little further in the same direction and call one species of the bird a 'screech-owl' we are only tautologically adding an insulting description to insulting imitation, telling the bird twice over what a hideous noise he makes, though really there is much attractiveness in the eery cry of the owl at night. He will forgive us. Oliver Wendell Holmes has a story of a precisely grammatical owl at Boston which said 'To-whit, To-whom' instead of the uneducated 'To-whit, To-who' of the vulgar bird. But this is exceptional. Looking at these and other instances we find a certain principle running through all the nomenclature. It seems that when the bird's characteristic note was short and could be suggested easily by a word, then that word was taken for its name : then, failing that, a descriptive name was given-descriptive it might be of its colour, as blackbird; or of the striking colour of a certain part, as redbreast; or of a general appearance of colour, as pie; but these possibilities would very soon be exhausted, and for the rest the names have to be as descriptive as they can be made of habit or habitat.

And when we consider them all, we are much disposed to agree with the spirit of the child's observation: What a clever man Adam must have been, to find names for all the animals!' Presumably there was spacious leisure in the Garden of Eden.

HORACE G. HUTCHINSON.