1018 WAGTAIL 
WAGTAIL (Wagsterd and Wagstyrt, 15th cent. fide Th. Wright, 
Vol. Vocabul. ii. pp. 221, 253; Uuagtale, Turner, 1544, p. 53), the 
little bird that delights us equally by its neat coloration, its slender 
form, its nimble actions and its sprightly notes! Since it is so 
generally dispersed, especially in summer, throughout the British 
Islands, it needs no further description. 
The Pied Wagtail of authors, it is the Motacilla? lugubris of 
modern ornithology, or JZ. yarrella of some writers, and has for its 
very near ally—if indeed it be not merely a local race of—the M. 
alba of Linnzus, which has a wide range in Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, visiting England almost yearly, and chiefly differing from 
the ordinary British form in its lighter-coloured tints,—the cock 
especially having a clear grey instead of a black back. Eleven 
other more or less nearly-allied species are recognized by Dr. Sharpe 
(Cat. B. Brit. Mus. x. pp. 456-496), who has laboriously treated the 
complicated synonymy of this group of birds. Eight of them are 
natives of Asia, several wintering in India, and one, J. ocularis, 
even reaching Alaska, while the rest are confined to Africa. No 
colours but black, grey or white enter into the plumage of any of 
the foregoing ; but in the species peculiar to Madagascar, M. flavi- 
ventris, as well as in that which it much resembles, the so-called 
Grey Wagtail of Britain, M. melanope (M. boarula or sulphurea of 
some authors), a great part of the lower surface is yellow. This is 
one of the most graceful of birds, and though having a very wide 
range in the world at large is curiously local in its distribution in 
Britain, being almost wholly confined in the breeding-season to the 
neighbourhood of rocky streams in the west and north, and a line 
drawn from the Start Point, slightly curving to include the Derby- 
shire hills, and ending at the mouth of the Tees, will, it is believed, 
mark off its breeding-range in England. ‘Then there is a section 
which by some systematists has been raised to the rank of a genus, 
Budytes, containing the Wagtails in which yellow takes a still more 
prominent part in their coloration. Of these, 8 species, besides 
several subspecies, are recognized by Dr. Sharpe (ut supra, pp. 503- 
532). One of these is the common Yellow Wagtail of England, 
1 It is the Dishwasher of some parts of England, in others it has the endear- 
ing nickname of Molly or Polly Washdish, with which may be compared the Ice- 
landic Mariu-erla, and of course the French Lavandiére and Batte-lessive. 
2 The genus Motacilla (an exact rendering of the English ‘‘ Wagtail,” the 
Dutch Kwikstaart, the Italian Codatremola and other similar words), which, as 
originally founded by Linneus, contained nearly all the ‘‘soft-billed” birds of 
early English ornithologists, was restricted by various authors in succession, fol- 
lowing the example set by Scopoli in 1769, until none but the Wagtails remained 
in it. Most of the rest are now commonly classed as Sylviide (WARBLER), while 
the Wagtails with the Pipirs, and possibly some others, constitute the Family 
AMotacillidx. 
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