HOW BIRDS ABE NAMED. 129 



is a pheasant and the little quail is a partridge ; the man from 

 the Pacific coast when speaking of pheasants means the beauti- 

 ful ring-necked pheasant imported from China. When they 

 talk together, they are sure to disagree, .because they have in 

 mind entirely different birds. With other birds it is even 

 worse. A gannet is usually supposed to be a short-legged sea- 

 bird that dives from the wing, but in Florida a long-legged 

 wading bird, elsewhere known as the wood-ibis, is called a 

 gannet. In Louisiana a white egret, a kind of heron, is called 

 a grosbeak, but in other places a grosbeak is a small perching 

 bird. The water-turkey of Florida is the snake-bird, or 

 anhinga, a great web-footed creature, a cousin of the cormo- 

 rant ; but with Nevada miners the little water-ousel, a relation 

 of the cat-bird, is a "water-turkey." In Colorado the same 

 bird is known as a " water-wren," a much better name than 

 either of the others. There is no limit to the number of 

 interchanges of name like these. And the situation is not 

 improved by some birds having ten, twenty, or even thirty 

 names in different parts of the country. 



What is the scientist to do ? He gives the bird a Latin name 

 that is to apply to that one bird and to nothing else ; and he 

 either translates the Latin name into English, or selects the 

 best-known English name as the standard English name. So 

 every bird has at least two names that in the usage of science 

 apply to itself and to no other bird. 



Who names the birds ? It used to be that the man who dis- 

 covered them gave them both an English and a Latin name ; 

 but now the discoverer less often names them himself. Instead, 

 he sends the bird to some man whose whole time is spent in 

 studying birds, to determine whether it is really new or not ; 

 and if this man decides that the bird is something never seen 

 before, he gives it a name. 



