206 BIRD NAMES. [No. 60. 



length from sixteen to twenty-two inches ; extent thirty to forty 

 inches ; bill three and a half to five and a half inches ; and Wil- 

 son describes the bill as "nearly six inches in length." I have 

 measured only one freshly killed specimen ; its measurements 

 were : length twenty-one and a quarter inches ; extent thirty- 

 one inches ; bill three and three quarter inches. 



Range, as given in A. O. U. Check List : " North America, 

 breeding in the interior (Missouri region and northward), migrat- 

 ing in winter southward to Central America and Cuba." 



MABBLED GODWIT: GREAT MARBLED GODWIT: GREAT 

 GODWIT: AMERICAN GODWIT: GREATER AMERICAN GODWIT.* 

 Wilson (1813) speaks of its being sometimes called RED CURLEW 

 by " our gunners ;" and Maynard, in Birds of Eastern Massa- 

 chusetts, 1870, records BADGER -BIRD and BRANT -BIRD (see 

 Nos. 53, 54, 61). 



I have but one note of hearing this species named between 

 New Brunswick and Rhode Island, where it is too little known 

 to bear any very well-established names. An old gunner at 

 Salem, Mass., to whom I showed a stuffed specimen, said, " We 

 call that a curlew here." 



At Newport, R. L, COMMON MARLIN ; at Shinnecock Bay, 

 L. I., RED MARLIN (and referred to by this latter name in an 

 article about shooting near Barnegat Light, N. J., the communica- 

 tion being headed Snipe at Forked River Forest and Stream, 

 October 3, 1878). On Long Island at Moriches, Bellport, and 

 Seaford, in New Jersey at Manasquan, Barnegat, Tuckerton, 



* The name godwit is probably from the Anglo-Saxon god, good, and wild 

 or wihta, creature, animal, wight. A good bird to eat, in other words. We 

 read in Dr. Thomas Moufet's Health's Improvement, " corrected and enlarged " 

 by Chr. Bennet, 1655 : "A fat godwit is so fine and light meat, that noblemen, 

 yea, and merchants too, by your leave, stick not to buy them at four nobles a 

 dozen." Ip Hearne's Journey to the Northern Ocean, 1795, the name is printed 

 "godwait;" and Dr. Merriam refers as follows (1877) to the spelling in Rev. 

 J. H. Linsley's Catalogue of Connecticut Birds, 1843: " The good old preacher 

 in speaking of these birds could not take his Lord's name in vain on so slight 

 a provocation, hence he called them ' goodwits.' 1 " 



