44 EMBERIZID^E. 



distinction were it not everywhere so common ; and his song 

 also, though doubtless heard with rapture by his mate, is 

 indifferent, consisting chiefly of one note repeated five or six 

 times in quick succession, followed by two others, the last of 

 which is drawn out to a considerable length. Yet one can- 

 not deny that this strain, repeated as it is, with but short 

 intermissions, for half an hour together from the same perch, 

 is in strict keeping with the languors of a summer's day, 

 and, protracted to a season when nearly all other birds are 

 silent, it inspires the human listener with interest in the 

 performer.* No species continues its song so late in the year 

 or so indefatigably during the heat of a cloudless day, and 

 thus in the mind of nearly all lovers of the country the notes 

 of the Yellow Hammer are associated with calm, bright 

 weather, and wherever heard recal memories of sultry July 

 or August afternoons when hardly another sound breaks the 

 silence of the fields save the chirping of grasshoppers, and 

 the wayfarer gladly seeks the welcome shade of a solitary tree 

 or bush to screen him from the scorching glare of the sun. 



stieon Zooicon, p. 80) and by Ray in 1674 (Coll. Engl. Words, &c, p. 88). 

 Perhaps the parent form was the old German Embritz, whence comes the Latin- 

 ized modification Emberiza, spelt by some ancient authors Embriza. Mr. Skeat, 

 in a communication kindly made on this point to the Editor, remarks that the 

 letter h is seldom wrongly prefixed, and cites among the few examples of the 

 practice "hermit," "horde" and "humbles" — the roots of which are probably 

 eremila, ordu and umbilicus respectively. Mr. J. W. Cartmell has added 

 to these words " hogshead," which ought to have been " oxhead," from the 

 Dutch ochshood, and " howlet " instead of " owlet " — the last being almost an 

 exact parallel to " Hammer" in the present bird's name. Dr. Robert Latham's 

 assertion (Diet. Engl. Lang. ii. p. 1432) that "the derivation is the A.S. 

 huma =skin, clothing, covering " seems to be wholly unsupported by evidence. 



* The character of the Yellow Hammer's song has naturally led to its being 

 often syllabled, and in England one rendering of it, which has several local 

 variations, is "Little bit o' bread and no cheese." In Scotland no such 

 humorous version is current, and there its interpretation, according to Mac- 

 gillivray, is " Deil, deil, deil tak ye " (i.e., ye who would rob the nest). This 

 form of imprecation seems to be connected in the mind of North Britons with a 

 strange superstition that the Yellow Yoldring, as they most frequently call the 

 bird, is on very familiar terms with the Evil One, who is supposed on a May 

 morning to supply it among other odd dainties with half a drop of his own 

 blood, the effect of which is somehow to produce the curious markings on its 

 eggs to be presently described. 



