REED-PHEASANT—REGENT-BIRD 779 
turdoides), while REED-PHEASANT is the local name in East 
Anglia for the unhappily-called Bearded Trrmouse. 
REEL-BIRD or REELER, a local name for what in books is 
called the Grasshopper-WaRBLER, Locustella nevia, while the prefix 
“Night” signified what is usually known as Savi’s WARBLER, 
Potamodus luscinioides, in the days when it inhabited the English 
Fen-country. In either case the name was applied from the resem- 
blance of the bird’s song to the noise of the reel used by the hand- 
spinners of wool. 
REEVE, the hen Rurr, a word that puzzles philologists as 
offering an apparently inexplicable vowel-change (¢f. Skeat, Htymol. 
Dict. 8.v.). 
REGENT-BIRD, a very beautiful and by no means abundant 
inhabitant of the eastern part of Australia, conspicuous for the 
deep golden-yellow and velvety-black of the male’s plumage. 
Originally described in 1801 by Latham (Jnd. Orn. Suppl. p. xliv.) 
from a specimen in Lambert’s collection, as a Thrush, 7'urdus melinus, 
it was figured and again described in 1808 by J. W. Lewin (B. N. 
Holl. p. 10, pl. vi.) as Meliphaga chrysocephala, the Golden-crowned 
Honey-sucker ; a name changed by him in the subsequent issue of 
his work in 1822 (Bb. N. S. Wales, p. 6) to King Honey-sucker. In 
1823, Quoy and Gaimard (Ann. Sc. Nat. v. p. 489), referred it to 
the Orioles as Oriolus regens. In 1825 Swainson (Zool. Journ. i. p. 
476), though not removing it from the Orioles, perceived in it some 
affinities to the Birds-of-Paradise, and founded for it a new genus, 
Sericulus, which has since been generally accepted, while in 1845 
G. R. Gray (Gen. B. i. p. 233), aided probably by access to the un- 
published drawings of Lambert, was able to establish the identity of 
Lewin’s species with Latham’s (which must have been from a female 
specimen), and thus the bird became the Sericulus melinus of ornith- 
ology.? Still its affinities remained in doubt until Mr. Coxen’s 
account in 1864 of the discovery by Mr. Waller of Brisbane that it 
1 From their more elaborate account (Voy. de ?Uranie et de la Physicienne, 
Zool. pp. 46, 105, pl. 22) it appears that when they were in Australia in 1819 
the colonists called the bird the ‘‘ Prince Regent,” and this indicates the origin 
of its present name. A few years later Lesson (Voy. de la Coquille, Zool. p. 641) 
confirmed their statement, but improved upon it by mistakes of his own which 
have gained currency in this country. He supposed it to have been discovered 
during the Regency (which only began in 1810), and declared that Lewin (the 
number of whose plate he misquotes) had called it “ King’s Honey-sucker” after 
a former governor of that name, whereas the change, as mentioned in the text, 
was doubtless due to the Regent becoming King in 1820. The earliest appearance 
of the name Regent-bird known to me is in the list of Australian animals 
included in the Geographical Memoirs of New South Wales, edited in 1825 by 
Barron Field (p. 503). 
2 Stephens (Gen. Zool. x. p. 240) has the name meddinus, and the spelling, 
