ORNITHICHNITES—ORTHONVX 657 
and again deceived some of the best ornithologists, though the 
birds are structurally far apart. Another genus which has been 
referred to the Oriolidx, and may here be mentioned, is Sphecotheres, 
peculiar to the Australian Region, and distinguishable from the 
more normal Orioles by a bare space round the eye. 
The Baltimore Oriole, Orchard Oriole, and other North-American 
birds to which the name has been applied, belong to the wholly 
distinct Family Icteridx (ICTERUS). 
ORNITHICHNITES, a word compounded from the Greek by 
Hitchcock in 1832 (Am. Journ. Se. xxix. p. 315) to signify the fossil 
footprints of Birds, and hence taken as the generic name of the 
animals which had left those marks, but are now generally believed 
to have been Dinosaurs (Fosstt Birps, page 277). 
ORNITHOLITE, a stone containing the remains or impression 
of the remains of a Bird. 
ORNITHOLOGY, from the Greek épv6-, crude form of dpvs, 
a bird (cognate with Scandin. %rn and A.S. Earn, whence our ERNe), 
and Aoyia, allied to Adyos, commonly Englished a discourse. The 
earliest use of the word thus spelt seems to be in the third edition 
of Blount’s Glossographia (1670), where it is explained as “the 
speaking of birds: the title of a late Book”? (ef. Skeat, Etymol. 
Dict. p. 407). 
ORNITHOTOMY, the dissection of Birds, and hence the 
science thereon founded. 
ORTHONYX, the scientific name given in 1820, by Temminck, 
to a little bird, which, from the straightness of its claws,—a 
character somewhat exaggerated by him,—its large feet and spiny 
tail, he judged to be generically distinct from any other form. 
Concerning its affinities much doubt long prevailed. The typical 
species, O. maculatus or spinicauda, is from eastern Australia, where 
it is said to be very local in its distribution, and strictly terrestrial 
in its habits. In the course of time two other small birds from 
New Zealand, where they are known as the “ WHITEHEAD” and 
1 This book was doubtless ‘Ornitho-logie, | or | The Speech of | Birds. | 
London, | Printed for John Stafford, and are to | be sold at his House, at the 
George at | Flect-bridge. 1655.’ The authorship of the book, of which there are 
several later editions, is ascribed by Lowndes (p. 848) to Thomas Fuller ; but 
whether he was the celebrated writer of that name is doubtful. Mr, J. E. Bailey 
in his Life of that worthy (London: 1874, pp. 761, 762) includes it among his 
‘ spurious works,” though a later biographer, Mr. Morris Fuller (London : 1884, 
ii. p. 525) accepts it as genuine. Whoever may have been the author, the word 
‘Ornithologie ” is used in a sense very different from the meaning applied to it a 
few years after, for this treatise is a fable, perhaps, like the agnate ‘ Anthologia’ 
published with it, ‘‘ Partly Morall, Partly Misticall,” and possibly has also a 
political significance. 
42 
