1 026 WA VE V— WAX WING 



called Wattle-birds though not possessing any appendage to justify 

 the name ((/. Gould, Hand. B. Austral, i. pp. 534-544; Gadow, 

 Cat. B. Br. Mus. ix. jDp. 262-266), while the rare and apparently 

 extinct Clmtoptila angudipluma of Hawaii, though from a locality so 

 far off, would seem to be near of kin {cf. Wilson and Evans, B. 

 Saiidiv. IsL). 



WAVEY, a name long used by the residents in the Hudson's 

 Bay Territoiy, apparently for any species of Wild Goose (p. 374), 

 but especially for those of the genus Chen (Hearne, Journei/, p. 442). 



WAXBILL, the name in use in Edwards's time (1751) for the 

 well-known little cage-bird, the Loxia astrild of Linnaeus and Edrilda 

 astrild of modern ornithology, one of the Ploceidx (Weaver-bird), 

 but also applied to several other species, more or less allied, Avhich 

 have the bill like sealing-wax, though they are placed by Dr. Sharpe 

 {Cat. B. Br. Mm. xiii.) in almost as many distinct genera. 



WAXWING, apparently first so-called by Stephens in 1817 

 {Gen. Zool. x. 420), having been before known as the "Silk-tail" 



{Phil. Tra.ns.- 1685, p. 1161)— a literal 

 rendering of the German Seidenschwanz 

 — or "Chatterer" — the prefix "German," 

 " Bohemian " or " Waxen " being often 

 also applied. Stephens's convenient 

 name has now been generally adopted, 



Waxwing. (After Swainson.) . . , . , . ,., i- ^- • i j 



since the bn^d is readily distinguished 

 from almost all others by the curious expansion of the shaft of 

 some of its wing-feathers at the tip into a flake that looks like 

 scarlet sealing-wax, while its exceedingly silent habit makes the 

 name "Chatterer" wholly inappropriate ((/. page 85). It is the 

 Armpelis garrulus of Linnaeus and of more recent ornithologists.'^ 



The AVaxwing is a bird that for many years excited vast in- 

 terest. An irregular winter-visitant, sometimes in countless hordes, 

 to the central and some parts of southern Europe, it was of old 

 time looked upon as the harbinger of war, plague, or death, and, 

 while its harmonious coloration and the grace of its form were 

 attractive, the curiosity Avith which its irregular appearances were 



^ Liuiiffius had, as is vrell known, no conception of what is meant by tlie 

 modern idea of a " type " ; but none can doubt that, if such a notion had been 

 entertained by him, he would have declared his type-species to be that to which 

 the name was first applied, viz. the present, and hence those systematists are 

 wrono- who would remove this to a genus variously called Bombycilla, Bomhici- 

 phora, or, most absurd of all, Bomhicivora. The birds which ought to be re- 

 moved from his Am2xlis are those which are now generally recognized as forming 

 a Family Cotingidx (Chatterer), allied to the Pipridie (Manakin), and like 

 them peculiar to the Neotropical Fauna, in which they constitute a very natm-al 

 group (Introduction). 



