NOTES. 299 



[The English name most often used by authorities for this 

 Wagtail has been, I believe, the Grey-headed. It may be 

 unsuitable, as are other English names, but I do not think it 

 should be altered for that reason ; stability should be main- 

 tained in English names, it seems to me, as well as in scientific 

 ones. As to the name viridis, I take full responsibility for the 

 use of this. The author of the note in question wished to call it 

 borealis, but I altered it to viridis, for the simple reason that 

 in nomenclature we must follow a standard authority in 

 British Birds, otherwise we should be calling the same bird 

 by half-a-dozen different names. The latest authoritative 

 list is that published by Howard Saunders in 1907 (viz., A 

 list of British Birds, revised to July, 1907), shortly before his 

 death. Until this list is supplanted the names there employed 

 must be used in these pages. As to M . f. thunbergi, I have 

 no sympathy with the resuscitation of unknown and unused 

 names, and those who ardently search for them could, I 

 consider, be much more profitably employed. A flexible law 

 of priority applied in conjunction with common sense is most 

 valuable, but when priority is insisted upon regardless of 

 every other consideration it becomes a fetish which should 

 be hewn down and destroyed. In 1905, in his " Die ViJgel der 

 palaarktischen Fauna" (Heft, iii., p. 291), Dr. Hartert calls 

 this Wagtail Motacilla flava borealis, by which name and 

 M. f. viridis it has been equally well known. Now, in 1910, 

 Dr. Hartert says it must be called M. f. thunbergi, of which 

 no one has ever heard ; later we may expect some diligent 

 "antiquarian" to discover some older and equally unknown 

 name. Meanwhile the past history of the bird under the 

 names viridis or borealis will be lost in the vapour of these 

 unseemly ghosts. — H.F.W.] 



WATER-PIPIT IN DEVON. 

 A Pipit was shot on August 25th, 1904, by Mr. Parr, a 

 gentleman staying at the Staghunters' Hotel, Brenden, 

 Lynton, North Devon, and was sent to me as a Pipit— species 

 unknown. I recognised it as the Water-Pipit (Anthus 

 spipoletta), and that was confirmed by Dr. Bowdler Sharpe 

 when I showed it to him at the Natural History Museum on 

 July 13th, 1909. 



J. B. Nichols. 



A MARKED HOUSE-MARTIN. 



On July 15th, 1906, Dr. Thienemann, of the Rossitten 

 Observatory, caught on its nest and marked a House-Martin 

 (Chelidon urbica : No. 711), which afterwards proved to be a 



