152 Correspondence. [ist^'Tln 



me a few days ago, you say (p. 23) that you are puzzled by the 

 meaning of the word ' Galdens,' used by Dampier, and that it 

 is not mentioned in my Dictionary. Now, ' Galden ' is only 

 one of the many ways of spelling the word 'Gaulding' or 

 ' Gaulin,' which you will find I have mentioned on page 310 of 

 that work ; and I think there can't be a doubt that Dampier 

 meant by it one of the smaller Herons — probably of the genus 

 Bntorides — of which I think you have three or four species in 

 Australia, though I should not venture to say which of them it 

 was. Dampier, as you must well know, had been much in the 

 West Indies, and there, according to my experience, the word 

 'Gaulding' is generally given to the familiar Little Green 

 Heron (of North America) — -B. virescens — though I have heard of 

 its being applied to some of the other Herons. I have always 

 looked on Dampier as a very good observer, and what he says is 

 almost always to be trusted. Of course, he was not so wise as 

 he would have been had he lived at the present day, but there 

 were few, if any, to equal him in his own. 'The head and bones 

 of a hippopotamus ' which he says a few pages further on were 

 found in the maw of a shark were, I take it, those of a dugong." 



It is worth mentioning that Professor Newton, in his Dictionary, 

 gives three other spellings : " Goldeine " and " Goldynis " from 

 an Act of the Scottish Parliament of 1555, and " Golding " from 

 another Scottish Act of 1600. He suggests a connection with 

 the Icelandic word " Gulond," meaning the Goosander. 



With this key, consulting. Gould's " Birds of Australia " and 

 Campbell's " Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds," Dampier's 

 Galden can be marked down with little risk of error, It was, I 

 do not doubt, the Little Mangrove Bittern {Bntorides stagnatilis), 

 figured in vol. vi. of Gould, and dealt with on page 963 of Camp- 

 bell. The latter author says of it : — " It will be observed that 

 this interesting little Bittern enjoys a goodly range, its favourite 

 haunts being small islets covered with mangroves, and low 

 swampy points of land running into the sea." He also observes 

 that Gilbert found a colony of Little Mangrove Bitterns on two 

 small islets in Coral Bay, near the entrance to Port Essington. 

 They may well have been the same colony as observed by 

 Dampier. 



As suggested by the Professor, Dampier picked up the word in 

 his West Indian buccaneering days. He first went to the West 

 in 1674, when 22 years of a^, and there was hardly a phase of 

 the wild life of that time and region that he did not experience, 

 from honest logwood-cutting to rank piracy. His adventures 

 there are well known. The latest to relate them is Mr. John 

 Masefield, in his "On the Spanish Main " (1906). The quota- 

 tions given under " Gaulin " in the " New English Dictionary " 

 indicate the common use of the word there. Dampier simply 

 spelt it in his own way, when writing of his Australian voyages ; 



