RING TAIL—ROC 791 
bird Sir Thomas Browne called “Ringlestones,” the derivation of 
which word is open to conjecture; but Prof. Skeat thinks it may 
refer to the bird’s habit of “ranging” (an old form of arranging) the 
stones for its nest. 
RINGTAIL, the old name for the female HARRIER (p. 410), 
long thought to be specifically distinct from the male; but also 
occasionally applied to the immature Golden EAGLu (p. 177). 
RIPPOCK or RITTOCK (Icelandic Ritur), a local name for a 
TERN. 
ROAD-RUNNER, a name for the CHAPARRAL-CocK (p. 84). 
ROBIN, a well-known nickname of the REDBREAST, which in 
common use has almost supplanted the stock on which it was 
grafted, while it has been transplanted as well to the oldest as to 
the newest settlements of England beyond sea, as to Jamaica in the 
case of the Green Topy, to North America where the Robin pure 
and simple is Zurdus migratorius (p. 250), but with the prefix Blue 
signifies some member of the genus Sialia (BLUEBIRD), in conse- 
quence only of their red breast, while in Australia the name is 
applied, irrespective of that character, to several species of Petrwca, 
Melanodryas and others (WHEATEAR), and in New Zealand to some 
of the birds of the probably kindred genera Miro and Myiomoira, 
which have no red at all about them. Robin-Snipe in North 
America is the KNOT in summer-plumage, when it is in winter- 
dress the prefix White is added. 
ROC, RUC and RUKH, transliterations of the name of the 
colossal bird celebrated in the Arabian Nights, which as everybody 
knows could carry off elephants in its clutch ; and according to the 
best authorities frequented Madagascar and its neighbourhood ! 
Discoveries of the last half-century, or thereabouts, have shewn 
that what so long passed for an idle tale was possibly founded on 
fact, however gross have been the exaggerations. In November 
1849 Strickland, who had already cited (The Dodo dc. p. 60) the 
testimony of Flacourt in 1658 (Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar, 
p. 165) as to a large bird, called “ Vouwron patra,” a kind of Ostrich 
said to frequent the south of that island, published in 1849 (dna, 
Nat. Hist. ser. 2, iv. p. 338) information received through Mr. 
Joliffe, an English naval officer, from a French trader named 
Dumarele, that he had seen in Madagascar the shell of an enormous 
egg capable of holding 13 wine-quarts, and used as a vessel for 
liquor by the natives (Sakalaves), who declared that such eggs 
were but rarely found and the bird which laid them still more 
rarely seen. Strickland remarked on the coincidence of this 
gigantic egg being in the locality to which the great traveller Marco 
Polo had referred the Roc. In January 1851 Isidore Geoffroy- 
