RINGTAIL— ROC 751 



bird Sir Thomas Browne called " Ringlestones," the dorivation of 

 which word is open to conjecture ; but Prof. Skeat thinks it may- 

 refer to the bird's habit of " ranging " (an old form of arranging) the 

 stones for its nest. 



RINGTAIL, the old name for the female Harrier (p. 410), 

 long thought to be specifically distinct from the male ; but also 

 occasionally applied to the immature Golden Eagle (p. 177). 



RIPPOCK or EITTOCK (Icelandic Fdtm-\ a local name for a 

 Tern. 



ROAD-RUNNER, a name for the Chaparral-Cock (p. 84). 



ROBIN, a well-known nickname of the Redbreast, which in 

 common use has almost supplanted the stock on which it was 

 grafted, while it has been transplanted as well to the oldest as to 

 the newest settlements of England beyond sea, as to Jamaica in the 

 case of the Green Tody, to North America where the Robin pure 

 and simple is Turdus migratorius (p. 250), but with the prefix Blue 

 signifies some member of the genus Sialia (Bluebird), in conse- 

 quence only of their red breast, while in Australia the name is 

 applied, irrespective of that character, to several species of Fdrceca, 

 Melarwclryas and others (Wheatear), and in New Zealand to some 

 of the birds of the probably kindred genera Miro and Myiomoira, 

 which have no red at all about them. Robin-Snipe in North 

 America is the Knot in summer-plumage, when it is in winter- 

 dress the prefix White is added. 



ROC, RUC and RUKH, transliterations of the name of the 

 colossal bird celebrated in the Arabian Nights, which as everybody 

 knows could carry off elephants in its clutch ; and according to the 

 best authorities frequented Madagascar and its neighbourhood ! 

 Discoveries of the last half -century, or thereabouts, have shewn 

 that what so long passed for an idle tale was possibly founded on 

 fact, however gross have been the exaggerations. In November 

 1849 Strickland, who had already cited {The Dodo &c. p. 60) the 

 testimony of Flacourt in 1658 {Histoire de la grandeisle Madagascar, 

 p. 165) as to a large bird, called " Fouron patra," a kind of Ostrich 

 said to frequent the south of that island, published in 1849 {Ann. 

 Nat. Hist. ser. 2, iv. p. 338) information received through Mr. 

 JolifFe, an English naval officer, from a French trader named 

 Dumarele, that he had seen in Madagascar the shell of an enormous 

 egg capable of holding 13 wine-quarts, and used as a vessel for 

 liquor by the natives (Sakalaves), who declared that such eggs 

 were but rarely found and the bird which laid them still more 

 rarely seen. Strickland remarked on the coincidence of this 

 gigantic egg being in the locality to which the great traveller Marco 

 Polo had referred the Roc. In January 1851 Isidore Geoffroy- 



