NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 399 



Dr. Coues does not seem clear about the origin of the name 

 Oriole, although it has been elaborately traced by Littre directly, 

 along with the French form of the same word Loriot, from the 

 Latin aureolus, golden. But under this bird, Icterus galbula, 

 Dr. Coues gives a most interesting origin for the vernacular 

 name "Baltimore." 



No doubt Perisoreus does look very like a crux, and we could 

 understand Dr. Coues indulging in a little imagination about it. 

 But if he had looked it up in Agassiz's ' Nomenclature,' and seen 

 that it was there derived from irtfta-uftiu, accumulo, I heap up all 

 round, and that the inventor of the name, Bonaparte, was 

 Agassiz's coadjutor in compiling that work, he would have saved 

 himself a few lines. What the application of the name may be 

 we are not sufficiently acquainted with the bird's habits to 

 disclose, but it clearly has to do with the bird's affinity to the 

 Magpie, and the well-known tendency to hoarding which that 

 bird has. 



The idea of Gyrfalcon being a corruption of Hierofalco is in- 

 genious, and may very probably be true, but it lacks the historical 

 basis upon which alone etymology can be sure. The German 

 Gerfalk seems to point neither to " gyrate " nor to tip*!-, and it is 

 quite certain that »e'p|, a hawk, has no etymological kinship with 

 t£f>o' ; , sacred. Prof. Skeat, in his lately published dictionary, is 

 content to take Gyrfalcon to be "a falcon that flies in gyres; " 

 though he gives a third alternative, the German Geicr, a vulture, 

 but, as that is probably cognate with gyra/re, it does not compli- 

 cate the question any further. 



We can help Dr. Coues to an explanation of hiaticula. 

 Charleton, at p. 109 of his ' Onomasticon Zoicon ' (1668), says 

 the name is given to the Bing Plover quia circa fiumiuum alveos et 

 rivorum hiatus versetur, because it haunts the mouths (hiatus) of 

 rivers. 



There is a carelessness about deriving Vanellus from vanus, 

 vain, that surprises us in the midst of so much erudition. The 

 old spelling, Vannellus, and the French vanneau, leave no doubt 

 as to the origin of the word being from the Latin vatuius, a fan. 

 Charleton (I. c, p. 108) clearly says the name is given quod alls, 

 instar vanni seu ventilabri, commotis concussisque strepitum eclat. 



Dr. Coues' corrections of obvious misspellings are among the 

 most important of the changes he introduces in the present work. 



