734 PLOVERS PAGE—POCHARD 
PLOVER’S PAGE, a local name for the DUNLIN from its 
curious habit of flying in company with a Golden PLOVER, as 
though waiting upon it, when both species are breeding on the 
same part of a moor. The common Icelandic name Léuprell 
(anciently Léarprel/) has a like origin, Léa being a Plover and 
prell (Anglice thrall) a servant. 
POCHARD, POCKARD or POKER, names properly belonging 
to the male of a species of Duck (the female of which is known as 
the Dunbird), the Anas ferina of Linneus, and Nyroca, Athyia or 
Fuligula ferina of later ornithologists—but names very often applied 
by writers in a general way to most of 
the subfamily ‘“ Fuliguline,” commonly 
called Diving or Sea-DucKs, the mem- 
bers of which can be readily distin- 
guished by the greater development of 
the lobe of the hallux from those of 
the Anatine or Freshwater - Ducks. 
The Pochard in full plumage is a very 
handsome bird, with a coppery-red head, on the sides of which 
a, HALLUX OF “‘SEa-”; 
b, or ‘f FRESHWATER ”-DUCK. 
(After Swainson.) 
importance, while those which seem far more significant are entirely neglected, 
so that his remark that his subdivisions are ‘‘ very probably artificial” will not 
provoke dissent. In diagnosing his three subfamilies (p. 66), his ‘‘ Scolopacinz” 
are distinguished by having the ‘‘toes all cleft to the base”—his other two, 
‘* Totanine” and ‘‘ Charadriine,” by having the ‘‘middle and outer toes con- 
nected by a web at the base.” Yet having assigned so much value to the pre- 
sence or absence of the interdigital web, which seldom exists but in a rudimentary 
state, when it becomes most developed he proceeds to disregard it wholly by 
uniting in one genus the AvosEers and the Srixrs, and no reason is given for 
this inconsistency. What to most ornithologists seems a character of some 
significance, as directly affecting the bird's economy, is by him wholly disregarded. 
This is the structure of the bill—whether it be a hard and horny chisel as in an 
OYSTER-CATCHER or a TURNSTONE, or a sensitive organ of perception as in a 
SNIPE ora Gopwit. Thus we find Hematopus grouped with Limosa, and Strep- 
silas with Scolopax, while Tringa and Erewnetes are severed. It would not be 
so very great an exaggeration of Mr. Seebohm’s practice to say that when two 
species have very different bills it is expedient to put them in the same subfamily, 
if not (as in the cases of Anarhynchus and Afgialitis, and of Eurinorhynchus 
and 7’ringa) in the same genus. If results like these legitimately follow—though 
this I take leave to doubt—from the teaching of ‘‘the new school of modern 
ornithologists” (p. iv.), a man who has any regard for common sense, not to say 
for science, may congratulate himself on not being imputed a member of it. Yet 
the many beautiful figures given by Mr. Seebohm will always make his work 
acceptable to ornithologists of all schools, despite his numerous vagaries, 
1 The derivation of these words, in the first of which the ch is pronounced 
hard, and the o in all of them generally long, is very uncertain. Cotgrave has 
Pocheculier, which he renders ‘‘ Shoueler,” nowadays the name of a kind of 
Duck, but in his time meaning the bird we commonly call Spoonsitn.  Littré 
gives Pochard as a popular French word signifying drunkard. That this word 
