ORNITHICHNITES—ORTHONYX 657 



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and again deceived some of the best ornithologists, though the 

 birds are structurally far apart. Another genus which has been 

 referred to the Oriolidx, and may here be mentioned, is Sphecotheres, 

 peculiar to the Australian Region, and distinguishable from the 

 more normal Orioles by a bare space round the eye. 



The Baltimore Oriole, Orchard Oriole, and other North- American 

 birds to which the name has been applied, belong to the wholly 

 distinct Family Ideridse (Icterus). 



OENITHICHNITES, a word compounded from the Greek by 

 Hitchcock in 1832 {Am. Journ. Sc. xxix. p. 315) to signify the fossil 

 footprints of Birds, and hence taken as the generic name of the 

 animals which had left those marks, but are now generally believed 

 to have been Dinosaurs (FossiL Birds, page 277). 



ORNITHOLITE, a stone containing the remains or impression 

 of the remains of a Bird. 



ORNITHOLOGY, from the Greek Spvte-, crude form of 6>vis, 

 a bird (cognate with Scandin. 0rn and A.S. Earn, whence our Erne), 

 and Xoyia, allied to Xoyos, commonly Englished a discourse. The 

 earliest use of the word thus spelt seems to be in the third edition 

 of Blount's Glossographia (1670), where it is explained as "the 

 speaking of birds : the title of a late Book " ^ (cf. Skeat, Etymol. 

 Diet. p. 407). 



ORNITHOTOMY, the dissection of Birds, and hence the 

 science thereon founded. 



ORTHONYX, the scientific name given in 1820, by Temminck, 

 to a little bird, which, from the straightness of its claws, — a 

 character somewhat exaggerated by him, — its large feet and spiny 

 tail, he judged to be generically distinct from any other form. 

 Concerning its affinities much doubt long prevailed. The typical 

 species, 0. maculatus or sjnnicauda, is from eastern Australia, where 

 it is said to be very local in its distribution, and strictly terrestrial 

 in its habits. In the course of time two other small birds from 

 New Zealand, where they are known as the " Whitehead " and 



^ This book was doubtless ' Ornitho-logie, | or | The Speech of | Birds. | 

 London, | Printed for Johii Stafford, and are to | be sold at his House, at the 

 George at | Fleet-bridge. 1655.' The authorship of the book, of which there are 

 several later editions, is ascribed by Lowndes (p. 848) to Thomas Fuller ; but 

 whether he was the celebrated writer of that name is doubtful. Mr. J. E. Bailey 

 in his Life of that worthy (London : 1874, pp. 761, 762) includes it among his 

 " spurious works," though a later biographer, Mr. Morris Fuller (London : 1884, 

 ii. p. 525) accepts it as genuine. "Whoever may have been the author, the word 

 " Ornithologie " is used in a sense very different from the meaning applied to it a 

 few years after, for this treatise is a fable, perhaps, like the agnate ' Anthologia ' 

 published with it, "Partly Morall, Partly Misticall," and possibly has also a 

 political significance. 



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