No- 44.] BIRD NAMES. ^57 



Xuttall (1834) speaks of its being known in the vicinity of 

 Cambridge, Mass., as the ALEWIFE BIRD, " from its arrival with 

 the shoals of that fish ;" and Dr. Grinnell writes, in Century 

 Magazine of October, 1883 : " Few of our birds are so poor in 

 local names as this one, for it is almost everywhere known either 

 as the ' English ' or the ' jack ' snipe. Along the New England 

 coast, however, it has an appellation which is rather curious. 

 As the bird arrives about the same time as the shad, and is 

 found on the meadows along the rivers where the nets are 

 hauled, the fishermen when drawing their seines at night often 

 start it from its moist resting-place, and hear its sharp cry as it 

 flies away through the darkness. They do not know the cause 

 of the sound, and from the association they have dubbed its 

 author the SHAD SPIRIT." Another and similar name associ- 

 ating this bird with the coming of the fish, is found in the fol- 

 lowing quotation from Krider's Sporting Anecdotes : " We have 

 long noticed that when the nights are cool, with high winds 

 from the northwest, towards the latter end of March, very few 

 birds are to be found on the marshes. The prevalence of south- 

 erly winds and a hazy sky, with drizzling rain, is much more 

 favorable to their migration northward. The same remark holds 

 good in reference to the appearance of shad in the Delaware. 

 Indeed, snipe are called SHAD-BIRDS by many of the fishermen, 

 and the abundance or scarcity of the one is considered highly 

 indicative of that of the other." 



Mr. Ridgway tells me that the species is very commonly 

 called GUTTER SNIPE in the southeastern part of Illinois, and 

 he so terms it in his catalogue of the birds of Illinois, 1874. 



In Wood's New England's Prospect, 1634, "snites" are men- 

 tioned among other birds, but we can only guess at the species 

 referred to. Halliwell gives this old Anglo-Saxon name as 

 "still in use" in parts of England in 1847, and in Drayton's 

 Owl, 1604, we read of " the witless woodcock, and his neighbour 

 snite," and in Baret's Alveary, 1580, "a snipe or snite, a bird 

 lesse than a woodcocke." 



The " simpes ' mentioned in Morton's New English Canaan, 

 1637, perhaps meant wipe, but I cannot speak more confidently, 



