660 OSPIREN, 
OSPRAY or OSPREY,! a word said to be corrupted from ‘ Ossi- 
frage,” in Latin Ossifraga or bone-breaker. 
(Hist. Nat. x. 3) and some other classical 
writers seems, as already said, to have been 
the LAMMERGEYER (page 503); but the 
mame, not inapplicable in that case, has 
been transferred—through a not uncommon 
but inexplicable confusion—to another bird 
which is no breaker of bones, save Incident- 
ally those of the fishes it devours.? The 
Osprey is a rapacious bird, of middling 
size and of conspicuously-marked plumage, 
the white of its lower parts, and often of 
its head, contrasting sharply with the dark 
brown of the back and most of its upper 
parts when the bird is seen on the wing. It 
is the Falco haliaetus of Linneus, but un- 
questionably deserving generic separation 
was, in 1810, established hy Savigny (Cis. 
de I Egypte, p. 35) asthe type of a new genus 
which he was pleased to term Pandion—a 
name since pretty generally accepted. It 
has commonly been kept in the Family 
Falconidex, but of late regarded as the repre- 
sentative of a separate 
Family, Pandionide, 
for which view not a 
little can be said.? 
Pandion differs from 
1 Jn the so-called 
“plume-trade” the word | 
is applied to the feathers 
taken from the back 
certain EGRETS (cf. EXTER- 
bridge over the same. 
MINATION, p. 228). ie 
2 Another supposed old form of the name is ‘‘ Orfraie”’ ; 
but that is said by M. Rolland (fwune popul. France, 
li. p. 9, note) quoting M. Suchier (Zeitschr. Rom. 
Bones or Osprey’s Foor. 
of “@, tarsometatarsal bridge over the ex- 
tensor muscle of the toes ; 
The Ossifraga of Pliny 
b, tibial 
Philol. 
i, p. 482), to arise from a mingling of two wholly different sources:—(1) Ori- 
pelargus, Oriperagus, Orprais, and (2) Ossifraga. 
‘*Orfraie”’ again is occasionally 
interchanged with “fraze (which, through such dialectical forms as Fresaie, Fres- 
saia, is said to come from the Latin presaga), the ordinary French name for the 
Barn-Owl, Aluco flammeus (see OWL, infra, p. 679, note 2); but the subject is 
too complex for any but an expert philologist to treat. 
According to Prof. Skeat 
(Etymol. Dict. p. 408), ‘‘Asprey” is the oldest English form; but ‘‘ Osprey” 
dates from Coterave at least. 
* Dr. Sharpe goes further, and makes a ‘‘Suborder” Pandiones ; but the 
