66o 



OSPREY 



OSPRAY or OSPKEY, 1 a word said to be corrupted from " Ossi- 

 frage," in Latin Ossifraga or bone-breaker. The Ossifraga of Pliny 

 (Hist. Nat. x. 3) and some other classical 

 writers seems, as already said, to have been 

 the LAMMERGEYER (page 503); but the 

 name, not inapplicable in that case, has 

 been transferred through a not uncommon 

 but inexplicable confusion to another bird 

 which is no breaker of bones, save incident- 

 ally those of the fishes it devours. 2 The 

 Osprey is a rapacious bird, of middling 

 size and of conspicuously-marked plumage, 

 the white of its lower parts, and often of 

 its head, contrasting sharply with the dark 

 brown of the back and most of its upper 

 parts when the bird is seen on the wing. It 

 is the Falco haliaetus of Linnaeus, but un- 

 questionably deserving generic separation 

 was, in 1810, established by Savigny (Ois. 

 de rfigypte, p. 35) as the type of a new genus 

 which he was pleased to term Pandion a 

 name since pretty generally accepted. It 

 has commonly been kept in the Family 

 Fakonidse, but of late regarded as the repre- 

 sentative of a separate 

 Family, Pandionidw, 

 for which view not a 

 little can be said. 3 

 Pandion differs from 



1 In the so - called 

 "plume -trade" the word 



is applied to the feathers J BONES OF OSPREY'S FOOT. 

 taken from the back of a > tarsometatarsal bridge over the ex- 

 certain EGRETS (cf. EXTER- tensor muscle of the toes ' fc ' tibial 

 MINATION, p. 228). 



2 Another supposed old form of the name is "Orfraie" ; 

 but that is said by M. Holland (Faune popul. France, 

 ii. p. 9, note) quoting M. Suchier (Zeitschr. Rom. PMlol. 



i. p. 432), to arise from a mingling of two wholly different sources : (1) Ori- 

 pelargus, Oriperagus, Orprais, and (2) Ossifraga. "Orfraie" again is occasionally 

 interchanged with Effraie (which, through such dialectical forms as Fresaie, Fres- 

 saia, is said "to come from the Latin prsesaga), the ordinary French name for the 

 Barn-Owl, Aluco flammeus (see OWL, infra, p. 679, note 2) ; but the subject is 

 too complex for any but an expert philologist to treat. According to Prof. Skeat 

 (Etymol. Diet. p. 408), "Asprey" is the oldest English form; but "Osprey" 

 dates from Cotgrave at least. 



3 Dr. Sharpe goes further, and makes a " Suborder " Pandiones ; but the 



