384 GREENLEEK—GREENSHANK 
Linnzeus, ranked by many systematists with one section of HAw- 
FINCHES, Coccothraustes, but apparently more nearly allied to the 
other section Hesperiphona, and perhaps justifiably deemed the type 
of a distinct genus, to which the name Ligur- 
inus or Chloris has been applied. The cock, 
in his plumage of green and gold, is among the 
most finely coloured of our common birds, but 
he is rather heavily built, and his song is 
CeCe hardly to be praised. The hen is much less 
erica brightly tinted. Throughout Britain, as a 
rule, this species is.one of the most plentiful, and is found at all 
seasons of the year. It pervades almost the whole of Europe, and 
in Asia reaches the river Ob. It visits Palestine, but is unknown in 
Egypt. It is, however, abundant in Mauritania, whence specimens 
are so brightly coloured that they have been deemed to form a dis- 
tinct species, the Ligurinus awrantiventris of Dr. Cabanis, but that 
view is now generally abandoned. In the north-east of Asia and 
its adjacent islands occur two allied species—the Fringilla sinica of 
Linneus, and the F. kawarahiba of Temminck. No species of Green- 
finch is found in America; but what seems to be an exaggerated 
form, differentiated as a distinct genus, Chloridops, has been described 
from Hawaii in the Sandwich Islands (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1888, p. 218). 
GREENLEEK, according to Gould, the local name in New 
South Wales of Palxornis or Polytelis barrabandi, the scarlet-breasted 
PARRAKEET. 
GREENLET, a word originating apparently with Swainson in 
1831 (Faun. Bor.-Am. ii. p. 233) as an English rendering of VIREO, 
and not uncommonly used in America for birds of that genus and 
its allies. 
GREENSHANK, one of the largest of the birds commonly 
known as Sandpipers, the Zotanus glottis! of most ornithological 
writers. Some exercise of the imagination is, however, needed to 
see in the dingy olive-coloured legs of this species a justification of 
the English name by which it goes, and the application of that 
name, which seems to be due to Pennant, was probably by way of 
distinguishing it from two allied but perfectly distinct species of 
Totanus (T. calidris and T. fuscus), having red legs and usually called 
REDSHANKS. The Greenshank is a native of the northern parts of 
the Old World, but in winter it wanders far to the south, and 
occurs regularly at the Cape of Good Hope, in India, and thence 
! There seems no reason to dispute the application of this specific name by 
Linneus, who may be pardoned for recognizing the well-known GJutt of his own 
country in the Glottis of classical authors, since Belon and Gesner saw in the 
latter some kind of aquatic bird. Sundevall has, however, shewn that the 
ywrris of Aristotle was a WRYNECK. 
