NOTES AND QUERIES. 117 



principle that I = r, we can trace a connexion between the various names 

 for "eagle," such as aquila (Lat), aigle (French), etc., and the various 

 names for the heron tribe in which a guttural letter appears, viz., hiegro 

 (old High German for heron), egret, etc. The initial aspirate is of course 

 of little philological value, while the guttural g or q in the centre of a word 

 is probably of not much greater consequence in a question of roots. Thus 

 on the one hand we have two sub-classes of names, apparently derived from 

 a common root, where the letter r denotes the heron tribe, and the letter I 

 the eagle tribe ; on the other hand we have the two tribes of eagle and 

 heron meeting in the old English hern and erne. It would be very 

 interesting to many ornithologists if Mr. Wharton would try to trace the 

 connexion in language between the eagles and the hawks ; at any rate I 

 can inform him that the old spelling of hawk was haulk, just as the Latin 

 name for the marine auks is alca. The marine " auks " are probably so 

 called from the analogy of their hooked beaks and wise-looking heads to 

 those of the " hawks " on shore. Mr. Wharton is quite right to point out 

 that the Saxon form of hawk was havoc, which is simply hawk with an o 

 interpolated between the two last letters. But having done so, is it not 

 most remarkable that he does not see the plain fact that avocetta is nothing 

 more than Italian for " little havoc " = " little hawk or auk " ? Avis casta, 

 or " chastely coloured bird," is too far-fetched ; the avocet is merely "the 

 little hook-billed bird," with the hook turned up instead of down. [With 

 regard to the derivation of the name avocet, there is yet another suggestion 

 to be made, namely, that the word (a diminutive) may be derived from 

 avoco, avocare, to call out, bearing in mind the noisy cry of this bird, and 

 the fact that it was once provincially called " barker " and " yelper " in days 

 of yore when it used to breed here, and was well known to the fen-men. — 

 Ed.] If we go further, and besides admitting I and r to be transmutable 

 also adopt the method of transposition, it becomes very probable that the 

 words in which the liquid precedes the guttural, as in alca, haulk, falco, 

 &c, are from the same root as the words in which the guttural precedes 

 the liquid, such as aquila, eagle, egret, &c. The terminal n and ante- 

 terminal o in words like hiegro, heron, falcon, &c, probably derive their 

 origin from mere euphony — also I think it will be admitted that initial 

 aspirates, or intermediate gutturals which are a sort of rough " breathings," 

 make no difference to the root which appears to rest on the liquids I and r 

 for its pivot. Hiegro, deprived of its guttural, appears to indicate a con- 

 nexion between the herons and the hawks or falcons, e.g., hierax (Gr.) 

 gier-eagle and jer-falcon (Engl). My only real doubt is whether the words 

 beginning with a sibilant s are from the same root. In Greek we have 

 hieros = sacred, hierax = hawk. In Latin we have sacer = holy or 

 sacred, and the falcon has always been called sacer, saker, or sakr in the 

 language of European and Arabic falconers. Substituting I for r, and 



