WHITETHROAT. 405 
SYLVIA CINEREA*. 
WHITETHROAT. 
(Puate 10.) 
Ficedula curruca cinerea, Briss. Orn. iii. p. 876 (1760). 
Motacilla sylvia, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 330 (1766). 
Ficedula stoparola, Gerint, Orn. Meth. Dig. iv. p. 35, pl. ccexevi. fig. 1 (1773). 
? Motacilla rufa, Bodd, Table Pl. Enl. p.35 (1783, ex Daubenton). 
Sylvia communis, Lath. Gen. Syn. Suppl. i. p. 287 (1787). 
Sylvia cinerea, var. 8, Lath. Ind. Orn. ii. p. 515 (1790). 
Sylvia cinerea, Bechst. Orn. Taschenb. i. p. 170 (1802); et auctorum plurimorum 
—Temminck, Vieillot, Wolf, Ménétriés, Jenyns, Macgillivray, Keyserling, Blasius, 
Nordmann, Cabanis, Nawnann, Bonaparte, Gray, Schlegel, Selby, Salvadori, 
Degland, Gerbe, Sundevall, Lindermayer, Loche, Heuglin, Blunford, Fritsch, Shelley, 
Severtzow, Gould, Sc. 
Sylvia cineraria, Bechst. Natw'g. Deutsch. 2nd ed. ii. p. 534 (1807). 
Sylvia cinerea (Bechst.), var., Turton, Brit. Faun. p. 45 (1807). 
Curruca cinerea (Bechst.), Koch, Syst. baier. Zool. i. p. 157 (1816). 
Curruca sylvia (Linn.), Steph. Shaw's Gen. Zool. xiii. pt. 2, p. 210 (1826). 
Ficedula cinerea (Bechst.), Blyth, Rennie’s Field Nat. i. p. 310 (1833). 
Curruca cinerea ( Bechst.), var. persica, Fvlippi, Viagg. Pers. pp. 162, 348 (1865). 
Sylvia affinis, Blyth apud Salvad. Atti R. Accad. Sei. Tor. iii. p. 291 (1868). 
Sylvia rufa (Bodd.), apud Newton, ed. Yarr. Br, B. i. p. 406 (1873). 
The Common Whitethroat is, as its name implies, one of the best-known 
of the Warblers. It is acommon and generally distributed species through- 
out England and Wales. In Scotland it is one of the most familiar birds, 
but becomes rarer towards the north. Mr. Gray states that in the western 
counties it is extremely common. It is also found on several of the Inner 
Hebrides, as Mull and Iona; and Dixon met with it in alk the wooded parts 
of Skye which he visited ; but it is apparently unknown in the Outer Islands. 
Mr. Gray states that it has occurred in the Orkneys; whilst to the Shet- 
lands, according to Dr. Saxby, it is a straggler in warm summers. In 
Treland the bird is as well known and as widely distributed as it is in 
Great Britain. 
* Tt is a thousand pities that Professor Newton should have attempted to disturb the 
name by which the Whitethroat has been universally known for the last eighty years, 
both by British and continental ornithologists. It is possible that Daubenton’s figure of 
“ La Fauvette rousse”’ (Pl. Enl. no. 581. fig. 1) may be an exaggerated figure of a young 
male in-first plumage of the Whitethroat; but there can he no doubt that Boddaert would 
have been greatly surprised to learn that his name of Motacilla rufa was applied to the 
Whitethroat, which was figured in the same work, no. 579. fig. 3, under the name of 
“ La Grisette,” and which he-correctly identified with the Motacilla sylvia of Linneeus, 
Boddaert’s unambitious object was to supply the Latin names of the birds figured in the 
