Extracts from Diary of Otto Widmann 49 



CHAETURA PELAGIC A (LlnnaeuB) CHIMNEY SWIFT. 



(St. Louis Naturalists' Club, Feb. 26, 1921.) 

 The great Linnaeus took our Chimney Swift for a 

 Swallow and called it Hirundo Pelagica in his Systema 

 Naturae of 1758, and changed the orthography of the 

 specific name in a later edition in 1766 to Pelasgia. It is 

 not clear why he employed these words, since the mean- 

 ing of pelagic relates to the high seas, like marine ; it can 

 only be understood that he took it figuratively to mean 

 nomadic, migratory, in allusion to the nomadic Pelasgi, 

 an ancient, prehistoric race of the Mediterranean region. 

 Even Wilson described it in his American Ornithology in 

 1812 as Hirundo Pelasgia, Chimney Swallow. Bonaparte 

 in his Synopsis, Birds of the United States, 1828, took it 

 from the Swallows and placed it in the same genus with 

 the European Swifts and called it Cypselus Pelasgius. 

 He was followed by Nuttall in his Manual in 1832, and 

 by Audubon in his Ornithological Biography in 1834, but 

 in Audubon's Synopsis of 1839 and in his "Birds of 

 America" in 1840 the bird appears under its new name, 

 Chaetura Pelasgia, which was corrected by Baird in 1858 

 to Pelagica, on account of its priority, being used by 

 Linnaeus in 1758. 



The genus name Chaetura has been bestowed on the 

 bird by Stephens in Shaw's General Zoology in 1826. The 

 word is made from the Greek xai'-x. a bristle, and *»^' 

 tail, in allusion to the spines, which project from the ends 

 of the tailfeathers. Although Swifts have much in com- 

 mon with the Swallows in appearance and habits and 

 were formerly counted among them, not only by the peo- 

 ple generally, but, as we have seen, also by systematists, 

 they are now widely separated from them in classifica- 

 tion. 



While the Swallows belong to the Suborder Oscines of 

 the Order Passeres, the Swifts form together with the 

 Nighthawks and Hummingbirds the Order Macrochires, 



