Stone-chat 



12: 



A bird of great beauty and excejJtioual interest ; one can only 



express the pious wish that the 

 flourish in our land. 



buzzing Dorhawk " * may long 



Fig. II. 



The Stone-chat {Praliiicola rubicola, Linn.). 



The name " Stone-chat " is not a very happy one ; Macgillivray 

 long ago (1839) pointed out that of our common Chats, the Wheatear 

 was the true Stone-chat, while the so-called Stone-chat, and its close 

 allv the Whin-chat, should more properly be called Bush-chats. On 

 these grounds, he describes our Stone-chat under the name Black- 

 headed Bush-chat, and this is certainly a far more suitable one than 

 that in common use to-day ; but in the matter of names, we are a 

 very conservative people ; once a name, good or bad, has taken 

 root and becomes firmly established among us, it takes something 

 more than a pinch of common sense to eradicate it. Stone-chai it 

 w-as and Stone-chat it will be to the end of time ! 



*'Tis spent — this burning day of June ! 

 Soft darkness o'er its latest gleams is stealing ; 

 The buzzing dor-hawk, round and round, is wheeling, — 

 That solitary bird 

 Is all that can be heard 

 In silence deeper far than that of deepest noon, 



— Wordsworth, "The Waggoner," canto i., lines 1-6. 



