734 PLOVERS PAGE-POCHARD 



PLOYEPl'S PAGE, a local name for the Dunlin from its 

 curious habit of flying in company with a Golden Plover, as 

 though waiting upon it, when both species are breeding on the 

 same part of a moor. The common Icelandic name L6u]7rpell 

 (anciently Ldar])rxU) has a like origin, Lva being a Plover and 

 '^raell {Anglice thrall) a servant. 



POCHARD, POCKARD or POKEPv,i names properly belonging 

 to the male of a species of Duck (the female of which is known as 

 the Dunbird), the Anas ferina of Linnaeus, and Nyroca, JEthyia or 

 F'uligula ferina of later ornithologists — but names very often applied 



by writers in a general way to most of 

 the subfamily " Fuligidina.'," commonly 

 called Diving or Sea-DUCKS, the mem- 

 bers of which can be readily distin- 

 guished by the greater development of 



«, Hallux or " Sea- •• ; ^J^g J^l^g q£ ^J^g hallux from those of 



6, OF " Freshwater "-Duck. ,, > ,• -n i ^ -r\ n 



.,r. c. • N the Anatinai or l^reshwater- Ducks. 



(After Swamsoii.) 



The Pochard in full plumage is a very 

 handsome bird, with a coppery-red head, on the .sides of which 



importance, while those which seem far more significant are entirely neglected, 

 so that his remark tliat his subdivisions are "very probably artificial" will not 

 provoke dissent. In diagnosing his three subfamilies (j). 66), his " Scolopacinm" 

 are distinguished by having the ' ' toes all cleft to the base " — his other two, 

 " Totaninie" and " Charadriinee," by having the "middle and outer toes con- 

 nected by a Aveb at the base." Yet having assigned so much value to the pre- 

 sence or absence of the interdigital web, which seldom exists but in a rudimentary 

 state, when it becomes most developed he proceeds to disregard it wholly by 

 uniting in one genus the Avosets and the Stilts, and no reason is given for 

 this inconsistency. What to most ornithologists seems a character of some 

 significance, as directly affecting the bird's economy, is by him wholly disregarded. 

 This is the structure of the bill — whetlier it be a hard and horny chisel as in an 

 Oyster-catcher or a Turnstone, .or a sensitive organ of perception as in a 

 Snipe or a Godwit. Thus we find Hccviatopus grouped with Limosa, and Strep- 

 silas with Scolopax, while Tringa and Ereimctes are severed. It would not be 

 so very great an exaggeration of ]\Ir. Seebohm's practice to say that when two 

 , species have very diff'erent bills it is expedient to put them in the same subfamily, 

 c'Vi^H-'-^ if not (as in the cases of Anarhynchus and ASgialitis, and of Eur^tnorliynchiis 



" and Tringa) in the same genus. If results like these legitimately follow— though 



this I take leave to doubt — from the teachiug of "the new school of modern 

 ornithologists" (p. iv.), a man Avho has any regard for common sense, not to say 

 for science, may congratulate himself on not being imputed a member of it. Yet 

 the many beautiful figures given by ]\Ir. Seebohni will always make his work 

 acceptable to ornithologists of all schools, despite his numerous vagaries. 



^ The derivation of these words, in the first of which the ch is pronounced 

 hard, and the o in all of them generally long, is very uncertain. Cotgrave has 

 Pochcculier, which he renders " Shoueler," nowadays the name of a kind of 

 Duck, but in his time meaning the bird we commonly call Spoonrili.. Littre 

 gives Pochard as a popular French M'ord signifying drunkard. That this word 



