REED-PHEASANT— REGENT-BIRD 779 



lurdoides), Avhile REED - PHEASANT is the local name in East 

 Anglia for the unhappily-called Bearded Titmouse. 



REEL-BIRD or REELER, a local name for what in books is 

 called the Grasshopper-WARBLER, Locustella nsevia, while the prefix 

 " Night " signified what is usually known as Savi's Warbler, 

 Potamodus luscinioides, in the days when it inhabited the English 

 Fen-country. In either case the name was applied from the resem- 

 blance of the bird's song to the noise of the reel used by the hand- 

 spinners of wool. 



REEVE, the hen Rurr, a word that puzzles philologists as 

 offering an apparently inexplicable vowel-change (cf. Skeat, Etymol. 

 Diet. S.V.). 



REGENT-BIRD, a very beautiful and by no means abundant 

 inhabitant of the eastern part of Australia, conspicuous for the 

 deep golden-yellow and velvety-black of the male's plumage. 

 Originally described in 1801 by Latham [Ind. Orn. Stoppl. p. xliv.) 

 from a specimen in Lambert's collection, as a Thrush, Turdus melinus, 

 it was figured and again described in 1808 by J. W. Lewin {B. N. 

 Holl. p. 10, pi. vi.) as Meliphaga chrysocephala, the Golden-crowned 

 Honey-sucker ; a name changed by him in the subsequent issue of 

 his work in 1822 (B. N. S. IFcdes, p. 6) to King Honey-sucker. In 

 1823, Quoy and Gaimard {Ann. Sc. Nat. v. p. 489),^ referred it to 

 the Orioles as Oriolus regens. In 1825 Swainson (Zool. Journ. i. p. 

 476), though not removing it from the Orioles, perceived in it some 

 affinities to the Birds-of-Paradise, and founded for it a new genus, 

 Sericuhis, which has since been generally accepted, while in 1845 

 G. R. Gray (Gen. B. i. p. 233), aided probably by access to the un- 

 published drawings of Lambert, was able to establish the identity of 

 Lewin's species with Latham's (which must have been from a female 

 specimen), and thus the bird became the Sericulus inelinus of ornith- 

 ology.^ Still its affinities remained in doubt until Mr. Coxen's 

 account in 1864 of the discovery by Mr. Waller of Brisbane that it 



^ From their more elaborate account ( Voy. de V UranU et de la Physicienne, 

 Zool. pp. 46, 105, pi. 22) it appears that when they were in Australia in 1819 

 the colonists called the bird the "Prince Regent," and this indicates the origin 

 of its present name. A few years later Lesson ( Voy. de la Coqidlle, Zool. p. 641) 

 confirmed their statement, but improved upon it by mistakes of his own which 

 have gained currency in this country. He supposed it to have been discovered 

 during the Regency (which only began in 1810), and declared that Lewin (the 

 number of whose plate he misquotes) had called it " King's Honey-sucker " after 

 a former governor of that name, whereas the change, as mentioned in the text, 

 was doubtless due to the Regent becoming King in 1820. The earliest appearance 

 of the name Regent -bird known to me is in the list of Australian animals 

 included in the Geographical Memoirs of New South Wales, edited in 1825 by 

 Barron Field (p. 503). 



^ Stephens [Gen. Zool. x. p. 240) has the name mellinus, and the spelling, 



