404 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
On July Ist, 1869, I saw a Red-backed Shrike at Hole Bottom 
(950 feet), a dell full of trees and bushes, slightly exposed to 
the S.K., chattering and making a great noise. It is here a rare 
bird, as I have no other record of its occurrence. Says Chaucer, 
‘The Friar’s Tale’ :— 
“ As full of jangles,* 
rv full of venom * these Wariangles.” +—Y. 6990. 
These birds commence their autumnal migration in July, when 
they are to be seen along the coast of Sussex. On July 30th and 
31st, 1867, I saw two at Heene, and on August 7th and fh, 
8. F. Lucas shot two migrating. 
The Tits, at least the Great Tit and the Blue Tit, are clever 
mocking birds. On January 24th, 1868, I heard the Great Tit 
uttering a cry like that of the Wryneck, but not so loud and 
sweeter. I have noticed the same note in the Lesser Spotted 
Woodpecker, and a young Kestrel. In 1867 there was an extra- 
ordinary abundance of holly-berries at Heene, Sussex. The Blue 
Tit (August 9th) was constantly in the holly bushes, in company 
with a Blackbird, cutting off the berries, the ground being strewn 
with them. On Sunday, October 25th, 1868, at Pool, Wharfe- 
* “ Chattering.” 
+ Mr. Speght explains “ Wariangle’’ to be “A kind of birds full of noise, and 
very ravenous, preying upon others, which when they have taken, they use to hang 
upon a thorne or pricke, and teare them in peeces and devour them.” A faithful 
description of the habits of the Red-backed Shrike. Cotgrave’s ‘ French Dictionary,’ 
published 1650, translates arneat by ‘The ravenous bird called a Shrike, nyn- 
murder, wariangle.” The word is derived from the Old French guware, war, 
and jangler, to chatter. Now guare is one of the warlike terms of German 
origin which the Roman inhabitants of Gaul, or the “Old French,” picked up 
from their enemies in the battle fields by the Rhine (Max Miiller, Lect., 2nd ser., 
p. 263). It was first heard probably as a war ery, as Cotgrave gives it, “guare, 
guare, war, war.” The Anglo-Saxon “ Scrie” is rendered by Manning, in his 
‘Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,’ by “ T'urdus,” i.e., Turdus viscivorus, the 
Sereecher. The Old Norsk Skrikja is rendered by Cleasby, in his ‘ Icelandic 
Dictionary,’ ‘“ The Shrieker,” and Sél-skrikja (i.e., sun- or day-shrieker), “ Shrike, 
Butcher-bird.” (‘Itinerarium; or Travels of Eggersh Olaffson,’ 1772, p. 582), 
while the modern Swedish Skrikja is the Jay, another “screecher.” ‘ Shrikes 
Wood,” near Bewerley, takes its name from either the present species, or the Jay. 
It is also noteworthy that jangler in Old French first meant “ to chatter like a bird,” 
but afterwards came to mean in English jangle, “to quarrel,” while jangler dropped 
out of the French language. It is consistent with this and the above that, the 
chatterer which was first said to “jangle” was a quarrelsome chatterer, the 
Red-backed Shrike. But what a volume of cruelty is compressed into the name 
nynmurder, which expresses that which pursues, seizes, and tears to pieces, and so 
murders! (Old Norsk ninna, to pursue; myrdir, murderer), 
