260 WAGTAILS AND PIPITS 



THE PIPITS 

 [EDMUND SELOUS] 



Time was when the wagtails and pipits, instead of being 

 associated together, as they now are, in one family, stood disunited 

 in the text-books, whatever lurking sense of affinity may have caused 

 them to sometimes join company in the field ; when the former, 

 after the successive removal of various claimants to kinship, the 

 falsity or slender foundation of whose plea had gradually become 

 apparent, 1 walked proudly, alone, as the only real representatives 

 of the Motacillince, whilst the latter, with pretensions which, if only 

 they could be made good, must still better entitle them to the respect 

 and esteem of mankind, posed themselves, freely, as larks. And 

 indeed their title to this exalted station seemed, up to a comparatively 

 recent period, to be well made out. Not only did they dwell much 

 where larks were, but to the untrained eye of general humanity nay 

 even, then, to the scientific one they really looked like larks, a 

 fact still chronicled in such familiar rustic appellations as treelark, 

 shorelark, titlark, and the like, which may once, for aught I know, 

 have stood, boldly and largely, as their true names, upon every 

 page of their history, in ornithological works of high standing, but 

 from which they are now sternly excluded, except as subsidiary 

 local ones, to be but once written, in a small and, as it were, shame- 

 faced type. 2 



Nor did the resemblance end here, for in those early days, when 



1 Newton, A Dictionary of Birds. 



2 I am not ignorant that latterly some disposition has been evinced to salve the wound 

 thus inflicted. Hartert, for instance, and other recent writers have placed the Pipits in close 

 juxtaposition to the Larks, and had this been a first promotion the compliment could not have 

 failed in its effect. But what is close juxtaposition to those who have tasted the sweets 

 of identity? To a bird that has once been, and still thinks itself a Lark, the very name of 

 Pipit must be an offence. The original injustice is repeated, in its employment, however 

 employed, and it cannot be wondered at if such partial reparation has been coldly ignored by 

 those whom it was intended to conciliate. 



