110 CORRESPONDENCE. 



considered, is the applicability of the English designations given by 

 S.D.W. 



The name Fern Nightjar, is not sufficiently exclusive ; and I am 

 almost inclined to side with my intelligent friend, Mr. Blyth, in 

 considering European, — though a local, and therefore a partially 

 objectionable, name, — ^preferable to Fern, inasmuch as the other 

 species — the Vociferator ruficolliSy (N. Wood) — is only known in 

 Europe as a straggler, and even the few specimens which were shot, 

 occurred on the confines of Europe, whilst the common species is 

 spread over the whole of that part of the world. I am not certain, 

 therefore, that my former name, V. Europoeus, is not less objection- 

 able than V. melolontha. — Minnow (applied by S. D. W. to the 

 Kingfisher) would suit almost any other individual of the Haley on- 

 idse, as well as the British Kingfisher ; but I admit the extreme 

 difficulty of procuring an exclusive specific name for this bird. I 

 certainly think that it would have been preferable to have retained 

 the Latin name, ispida,* because, though the same objection applies 

 to it as to Minnow, yet splendens is by no means an improvement. — 

 Instead of Brake Nightingale, Mr. Blyth has proposed to me 

 Rusty-tailed N., and it is a curious fact, that that gentleman and 

 my excellent friend, Chas. Liverpool, Esq., M. D., alluded to this 

 name in their letters, at about the same time, and without either of 

 them being aware that the other had proposed it. — The Red Lark, 

 mentioned by Montagu and others, is, I believe, merely a variety of 

 the Sky Lark; and I cannot find that the real Red Lark, (A. Penn- 

 sylvaniea) has ever occurred in Britain. — Seedling cannot, in my 

 opinion, with propriety be allotted to any genus of the Fringillidce ; 

 the seed-eating is rather a family character than a generic one. — 

 Garden Linnet would, I think, be better rendered Whin Linnet, 

 inasmuch as the bird at all times abounds on furzy commons, while 

 it only frequents gardens during the breeding season. — The Brown 

 Starling (Sturnus unicolor) only ranks doubtfully in the British 

 Fauna. — Amongst the water birds, I have little objection to find 

 with the specific names, except that common is employed too fre- 

 quently. In one or two instances, as the Cominon Gallinnle, it 

 is admissible, as that bird is met with, and most abundantly, in 



• Though I can scarcely lay claim to being called an ** erudite scholar,** 

 and though I have not "rummaged lexicons and other musty repositories of 

 ancient lore, in search of the unknown epithet," I have little hesitation ia 

 pronouncing ispida to have its origin in piscis, a fish. — See The Analyst, vol. 

 iii,p.267. 



