284 BRITISH BIRDS. 



STERNA ARCTICA. 

 ARCTIC TERN. 



(PLATE 46.) 



Sterna paradissea, Briinn. Om. Bor. p. 46 (1764) ; Baird, Brewer, fy Ridgioay, Water- 

 Birds N. Amer. ii. p. 299 (1884). 



Sterna hirundo, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 227 (1766, partim) ; Sharpe fy Ih-esser, B. Eur. 

 viii. p. 255 (1872)*. 



Sterna macrura, Naum. Isis, 1819, p. 1847. 



Sterna arctica, Temm. Man, d'Orn. ii. p. 742 (1820) ; et auctorum plurimorum 

 Swainson fy Richardson, Brehm, Boie, Sundevall, Bonaparte, Stephens, Selby, 

 Sabine, Jenyns, Blakiston, Macgillivray , Yarrell, Audubon, Nuttall, Godman, 

 Tristram, Hartlaub, &c. 



Sterna nitzscMi, Kaup, Isis, 1824, p. 153. 



Sterna brachytarsa, Oraba, Reise nach Faro, p. 218 (1830). 



Sterna marina, Eyton, Cat. Brit. B. p. 55 (1836). 



Sterna brachypus, Swains. B. W. Afr. ii. p. 252 (1837). 



Sterna pikei, Lawr. Ann. Lye. New York, vi. p. 3 (1853). 



Sterna senegalensis, Swains., fide Schleg. Mus. Pays-Bas, Sterna, p. 16 (1863). 



Sterna portlandica, Ridgw. Am. Nat. viii. p. 433 (1874). 



It is not a little remarkable that the Arctic Tern should have been con- 

 founded with the Common Tern until so late as 1819. It is scarcely less 

 remarkable that it should have been reserved for an inland ornithologist 

 to point out the differences between the two species ; but when we learn 

 that this ornithologist was no less a person than the great Naumann, we 

 cease to wonder. It is to be regretted that he attempted to change the 

 name of the Common Tern, whilst giving a name to the new species which 



* Most ornithologists regard the attempt to transfer the name Sterna hirundo from the 

 Common to the Arctic Tern by Sharpe and Dresser, following in the wake of Bonaparte, 

 Gray, and others, and that of Saxicola stapazina from the Black-throated to the Black-eared 

 Chat by Dresser, after Sharpe had ceased to help him with the ' Birds of Europe/ as acts of 

 ignorance and folly on the part of two juvenile ornithologists who had nothing new to say 

 on the birds of which they wrote, and consequently made a desperate effort to achieve 

 notoriety by introducing novelties into nomenclature. There is, however, another view of 

 the question which is worth consideration before their conduct can be condemned. The 

 reductie ad absurdum which their proceeding caused most unprejudiced ornithologists to 

 make, as to the possibility of carrying out the rules of the Stricklandian Code, has been of 

 infinite service to ornithology : and when we consider that the apparent folly of Sharpe and 

 Dresser has been the cause to a great extent of the present emancipation of ornithologists 

 from the trammels of the Rules of the British Association, which are now practically a 

 dead letter, I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to these two gentlemen who thus 

 heroically sacrificed their reputation for common sense and sound judgment for the good 

 of the science they loved. 



Although Linnaeus was a great naturalist, his knowledge of birds was very small ; and 

 there can be little doubt that he did not discriminate between the Arctic and the Common 

 Terns, and that his Sterna hirundo applies to both. 



