384 GREENLEEK—GREENSHANK 



Linnaeus, ranked by many systematists Avith one section of Haw- 

 finches, Coccothraustes, but apparent!}' more nearly allied to the 

 other section Hesperi'phona, and perhaps justifiably deemed the type 



of a distinct genus, to which the name Ligur- 

 inus or Chloris has been applied. The cock, 

 in his plumage of green and gold, is among the 

 most finely coloured of our common birds, but 

 he is rather heavily built, and his song is 

 Greenfinch. hardly to be praised. The hen is miich less 



(After swainson.) brightly tinted. Throughout Britain, as a 



rule, this species is one of the most plentiful, and is found at all 

 seasons of the year. It pervades almost the whole of Europe, and 

 in Asia reaches the river Ob. It visits Palestine, but is unknown in 

 Egypt. It is, however, abundant in Mauritania, whence specimens 

 are so brightly coloured that they have been deemed to form a dis- 

 tinct species, the Ligurinus aurantiiventris of Dr. Cabanis, but that 

 view is now generally abandoned. In the north-east of Asia and 

 its adjacent islands occur two allied species — the Fringilla sinica of 

 Linngeus, and the F. Jcawarahiba of Temminck. No species of Green- 

 finch is found in America ; but what seems to be an exaggerated 

 form, differentiated as a distinct genus, Chloridops, has been described 

 from Hawaii in the Sandwich Islands (Proc. Zool. Sue. 1888, p. 218). 



GREEISTLEEK, according to Gould, the local name in ISTeAv 

 South Wales of Falxornis or Folytelis harrabandi, the scarlet-breasted 

 Parrakeet. 



GREENLET, a word originating apparently with Swainson in 

 1831 {Faun. Bor.-Am. ii. p. 233) as an English rendering of ViREO, 

 and not uncommonly used in America for birds of that genus and 

 its allies. 



GREENSHANK, one of the largest of the birds commonly 

 known as Sandpipers, the Totanus glottis'^ of most ornithological 

 writers. Some exercise of the imagination is, however, needed to 

 see in the dingy olive-coloured legs of this species a justification of 

 the English name by which it goes, and the application of that 

 name, which seems to be due to Pennant, was probably by way of 

 distinguishing it from two allied but perfectly distinct species of 

 Totanus (T. calidris and T. fuscus), ha\dng red legs and usually called 

 Redshanks. The Greenshank is a native of the northern parts of 

 the Old World, but in winter it wanders far to the south, and 

 occurs regularly at the Cape of Good Hope, in India, and thence 



'■ There seems no reason to dispute the application of this specific name by 

 Linnoeus, who may be pardoned for recognizing the well-known Glutt of his own 

 country in the Glottis of classical authors, since Belon and Gesner saw in the 

 latter some kind of aquatic bird. Sundevall has, however, shewn that the 

 7XWTTIS of Aristotle was a Wryneck. 



