Rc.rrnt Liternture. 



417 



popular designations. Lil^e other nicknames and b3ewords thej "just 

 glowed." Let us trj once more, and take the case of the Scoters which 

 are so common along our Atlantic Coast, confining ourselves to one point, 

 the beak. This is all 'out of perspective,' so to speak, and fantastic in 

 color decoration besides, so that it catches the eye at first sight. This 

 vivid impression upon the thinking-cap of the natural man is instantly 

 translateil into speech, and from his tongue-telephone fiy such winged 

 words as skuiik-bill, muscle-bill, plaster-bill, pictiire-bilL blossom-bill, 

 butter-bill, butterboat-bill, hollozv-bill, copper-bill, and broad-bill, mo- 

 rocco-ja-v, goggle-nose^ buttertiose, snuff-taker, and so on. And it goes 

 without saying that the bill is not the onl\' point aliout these birds that is 

 available for like purposes. 



We do not propose to import Mr. Trumbull's book botlily into 'The 

 Auk,' for that would be to deprive our readers of the pleasure they will 

 find out for themselves in handling this delightful accession to our shelves. 

 Nor would we excite needless alarm : yet, which one of us, though pretty 

 knowing in birds, can identify all the following names without our 

 author's assistance.? Alwar grim, assemblyman, badger, barren hen, 

 beetle, blackjack, booby weakhorn, broady, brownie, bunty, caloo, chuck- 

 atuck cockawee, cowfrog, darcall, duntei", earl, fizzy, fute, granny, hound, 

 humility, iron pots, jingler, krieker, looby, lord, lousybill maggot snipe' 

 mealybird, mommy, mosshead, mowyer, night-peck, noddy, old smoker' 

 pelick, pike-tail, pilot, pishaug, pulldoo, quandv, quink, rodge, scoldenore, 

 shrups, simp, skirl-crake, sniee, smoker, snowl (it makes one creepy to 

 think what a terrible thing a 'snowl' must be I), southerland. sparling 

 fowl, split-tail, squam, stib. timlier-doodle, triddler. tweezer, wamp^ 

 weaser, whiffler, yelper. 



Next after the scholarly, literary complexion of this book the thing we 

 admire most is the author's care in sorting out the names and affixing 

 them to the right bird. A living language is even more elusive and illu- 

 sory than the dead speech of our technical treatises, if happily such acme 

 of mirage be a natural possibility, and it must have taken a great deal of 

 close work to arrange the synonymy and homonymy. It is not always a 

 case of sixteen names per bird : it is sometimes a matter of sixteen birds 

 of one name. It is the s^ry gist of dialecticism that it shall be pliable^ 

 vielding to every impress of geographical environment. A word is a verv 

 different thing when twanged through the nose of a Down-east fisherman 

 and smacked by the lips of a Southern darkey; besides which orthoepic 

 changes, different sets of people think differently about the same thing, 

 and consequently call it differently. So it may be said of our game birds, 

 with slight paraphrase of a saying of one of the friends of our youth, 

 "«£>;«(■« nan animnm mutunt, qui trans mare volant. In every case, Mr. 

 Trumbull has been at pains to pin the name down to its proper habitat ; 

 a matter, the importance of which to his success in this venture he has 

 evidently appreciated. And not only this : for. since time as well as space 

 has to be taken into the total reckoning, words that are at their full vigor 

 of life are properly dibtinguished from those that are dead or dying of 

 old age, and those that are just coming into existence. 



