MOLLY—MONAL 585 
must be heard under all circumstances where he best loves to 
dwell. To compare him with his only rival, the European Nightin- 
gale, seems to me quite out of place, though I will say that my 
faith in the powers of the Mocking-bird is so firm, that I believe 
were he successfully introduced into those countries where the 
Nightingale flourishes, that princely performer might some day 
wince as he was obliged to listen to his own most powerful 
strains poured forth with all their native purity by this king of 
feathered mockers, the subject of the present notice. 
In America there are no other birds that at all deserve the 
name of a Mocking-bird. The Magpie often imitates bits of human 
speech with great accuracy, while the CaAT-BIRD sometimes 
makes a feeble effort to bring out the notes of some of the 
smaller birds, but they are not to be thought of in connexion with 
the powerful productions of Mimus polyglotius, while the cat-like 
mewing note of the former is not in imitation of that animal at 
all, but only an accidental vocal resemblance.1 
R. W. SHUFELDT. 
MOLLY and MOLLY-MAWK, corruptions of MALLEMUCK, 
applied by modern seamen to the smaller kinds of ALBATROS. 
MONAL or MOONAUL (Hind. Mundil),? the Anglo-Indian 
name for birds of the genus Lophophorus, some of the largest of the 
1 Some twelve or fourteen other species of Mimus have been recognized, 
mostly from South America, where the name of ‘‘Calandria” (Lark) is often 
applied to them, and Mr. Hudson’s account (Argent. Orn. i. pp. 5-11) of the 
three inhabiting the portion of that continent treated of by him is well 
worth attention; but M. orpheus seems to be common to some of the 
Greater Antilles, and JZ. hilli is peculiar to Jamaica, while the Bahamas have a 
local race in M. bahamensis. The so-called Mountain Mocking-bird, Oreoscoptes 
montanus, is a form not very distant from Mimus; but, according to Mr. 
Ridgway, it inhabits exclusively the plains (overgrown with Artemisia) of the 
interior tableland of North America, and is not at all imitative in its notes, so 
that it is an instance of a misnomer. Of the other genera allied to Mimus, those 
known in the United States as THRASHERS, and belonging to the genus Harpo- 
rhynchus—of which six or eight species are found in North America, and are very 
Thrush-like in their habits—have been mentioned above ; but there is only room 
here to dwell on the Cat-BiIrb, Galeoscoptes or Mimus carolinensis, which is an 
imitator of many sounds, with at the same time peculiar notes of its own, from 
one of which it has gained its popular name. ‘The sooty-grey colour that, 
deepening into blackish-brown on the crown and quills, pervades the whole of its 
plumage—the lower tail-coverts, which are of a deep chestnut, excepted—renders 
it aconspicuous object ; and though, for some reason or other, far from being a 
favourite, it is always willing when undisturbed to become intimate with men’s 
abodes. Besides its range on the American continent it is one of the few species 
that are resident in Bermuda, while on more than one occasion it is said to have 
appeared in Europe, though whether as an unaided visitor may be doubted.—A. N. 
2 See Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, pp. 443, 444. 
