( 388 ) 



pseuste," 1822, as Oberholser pretended, for Meyer {Ziis f Ber. zu Meyer f Wolfs 



Taschenb. i. p. 95) did not use this name at all in a generic sense. 



The specific name of the Chiffchaff is collybita, Vieill. 1817, a name which, 

 nevertheless, should grammatically read " collybista." This is another instance of 

 the liarm done by those who " correct " the spelling of names according to Latin or 

 Greek orthography and grammatical rules — very often people who kuow less of 

 ancient languages than others. The custom of " correcting " names leads to incon- 

 sistency and vacillation : everybody knows that " nifiyaster" is bad and corrects it 

 into "riifiventris" or " rhodogaster" — according to taste— and that names like 

 melanotus, rufocentris, and others are incorrect; but very few know that collytyta 

 should really be collybista. It is the same with the unfortunate alteration of the 

 gender of specific names : everybody knows that Edoliisoma is a neuter, and it is 

 an unpardonable blunder to treat it as a femininum ; at the same time, however, 

 an evident masculine, Nucifraga, has always been looked upon as a femininum, 

 Ammomanes, undoubtedly a masculiuum, has beeu treated as femininum, and all 

 through the Catalogue, of Birds the gender of Halcyon is wrongly handled. 

 Therefore, I contend that specific and subspecific names should in no way be altered, 

 and especially should their gender not be made to correspond with that of the 

 genera, if this had not been done by their author who invented them, or if associated 

 with another generic name. 



The Chiffchaff has mostly beer, called Phylloscopus ryfus. Bechstein, however, 

 did not create the name Motacilla rufa for this bird, but he erroneously referred 

 Gmeliu's "Motacilla rufa et lotharingica" here. 



A strange muddle has been made by some ornithologists with the name Sylvia 

 sylvestris Meisner, lv„'4. This name was given by Meisner to the Chiffchaff, which 

 was correctly separated from the Willow-wren. The song of the Chiffchaff was also 

 correctly described by him. In 1851 Piissler gave some nido- and oological notes 

 about a bird he heard singing like a Willow-wren, but which attached to its song 

 the "chiffchaff, chiffchaff" of its congener. This bird he called " Silvia meisneri" 

 without obtaining or describing it. Apparently for no proper reason, our German 

 brother ornithologists have frequently attached the name " Sylvia sylvestris Meisn." 

 to such birds with "hybrid song," although the names "5. meisneri" and 

 " S. sylvestris " were correctly quoted as synonyms by Seebohm in vol. v. of the 

 ( 'at, B. Brit. Mus. 



Two somewhat allied forms must bear the names Phylloscopus a/finis (Tickell, 

 1833) and Ph. subajfinis (Grant, 1900). Their distribution is apparently not 

 sufficiently known, and, though they agree in structure, we could not at present say 

 whether they represent each other geographically and can be called subspecies. The 

 synonymy and nomenclature of these two forms has been wonderfully involved by 

 Messrs. Sharpe and Bianchi. Almost at the same date as by Grant, Ph. subajfinis was 

 described by Bianchi under the name of Oreopneuste davidi, but Grant's name has 

 some mouths' priority. Without knowing whether the species is valid or not and 

 where it belonged, Dr. Sharpe renamed Bianchi's davidi, calling it Oreopneuste 

 bianchii (Zoo/. Record, xxxvii. Aves, p. 54, because an Oreopneuste davidii existed 

 already as a synonym of Phylloscopus armandi, placed in Oreopneuste by Sharpe. 

 Thus in the Hand//*/, vol. iv. p. 214, PA. subajfinis appears under two numbers, 

 with three names. 



Another unquoted synonym of Ph. subajfinis is Oreopneuste a/finis Oustalet 

 (Ois. Chine, p. 207), a name antedated by Tickell's afuiis. It is true that Oustalet 



