Green Sandpiper. 605 



your last Number. There is a very convenient rule now 

 generally adopted by naturalists, that the name of a family 

 (i. e. of the next larger group to the genus) should be com- 

 pounded of the name of the most typical or best known genus 

 contained in it, with the termination idee or adce. See Mag. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. I. n. s. p. 175., Rule 18. Mr. Ogilby's fami- 

 lies of Lemuridae and Didelphidae (at p. 525.) are named con- 

 formably to this rule. But I am sorry that Mr. Ogilby has 

 departed from it in three other instances. His family Simice 

 should have been called Simiada, after the genus Simia 

 (Pithecus) contained in it. For the same reason, his family 

 name of Simiadce is objectionable as applied to the anthropoid 

 Pedimana, from its leading to the inference that the genus 

 Simia belongs to that group. Would not the name Cebidcc 

 be preferable ? Again, the term Gliridae implies that a genus 

 Glis is contained in that family. The appropriate term is 

 obviously Cheiromyidce. 



I must also remark that, when the name of a genus has 

 once become well established, it should never be dropped, 

 whatever be the subdivisions into which it may become ne- 

 cessary to break up that genus. The usual custom is to retain 

 the original term for the most typical or most familiarly 

 known of the subordinate groups. With this view, I think 

 that the term Simia, given by Linnaeus to the whole monkey 

 tribe, should be retained for the ourang-outangs, instead of 

 Geoffroy's name Pithecus. — H. E. Strickland. Oct. 20. 1837. 



The Green Sandpiper. — Observing at p. 555., as well as in 

 other instances, that the Totanus ochropus is still currently 

 regarded as a rara avis, or, at least, as a species of which the 

 occurrence of British specimens is deemed worthy of being 

 reported, it may be worth while to remark, that such is far 

 from being the case ; as, in several of the southern counties, 

 this bird is not very unfrequent, and examples of it are met 

 with every spring and autumn within a few miles of the me- 

 tropolis, chiefly in marshy places, contiguous to the Thames ; 

 and occasionally, in spring more especially, along small brooks 

 or water-courses, which appear to be its most appropriate 

 habitat. I have every reason to believe that "they breed in 

 Surrey, having seen a very young one, shot near Godalming, 

 with its primaries incompletely developed. During a recent 

 tour, I observed several of these birds, principally in a small 

 salt-water marsh, lying westward of Yarmouth, in the Isle of 

 Wight, where I tried to study their manners a little, though 

 unsuccessfully; as, although they frequently rose within gun- 

 shot (the adults solitary, or in pairs, the young in groups of 



