The Background of Ornithology 69 



And, again, in the names of birds, how much of the real life is embodied 

 in these. The vernacular is often the expression of subconscious genius, a genius 

 for naming things as old as the race itself. I have traced in old vocabularies, 

 as far back as that of ^Elfric (955-1020 A. D.), the vernacular of a number of 

 familiar bird names. Thus 'gull,' as the word stands in our modern dictionaries, 

 may have been derived from several sources; either from the voracious feeding 

 of the bird, or from some notion of foolishness or stupidity connected with it, 

 or even from the yellow color of its beak. Skeat would derive it from the second 

 above noted, which is Celtic in origin — "so called," he says, "from an untrue 

 notion that the Gull was a stupid bird. " But the name of this bird in the Anglo- 

 Saxon tongue is true to the life — haefen blaete — literally a "haven screamer." 

 "Plover," again, is close to its old French and Low Latin origin — meaning 

 of the rain, or belonging to rain — probably, as Skeat suggests, from being 

 "most seen and caught in a rainy season." Its German name, regenpjeifer — 

 the 'rain piper' — suggests a similar idea. 



Amonjg our own birds, this same genius for names has been at work. What 

 more appropriate title than 'Bobolink' for the gay jingler of our meadows, or 

 'Flicker' or 'Phoebe,' 'Veery' or 'Hermit,' 'Chewink' or 'Chickadee,' or that 

 array of Warbler names so rich in color suggestion ? What other Sparrow could 

 have been the Song Sparrow — or what other one the Chipping Sparrow ? Names 

 indicative of haunts call up a background picture of sea beaches in 'Sandpiper' 

 and 'Sanderling'; of bosky glades in 'Woodcock' and 'Wood Thrush,' and of 

 the homestead in 'Barn Swallow' and 'House Wren.' Even scientific nomen- 

 clature has been touched by this genius for names. What more appropriate 

 for a group of Woodpeckers than Dryobates, a treader of oaks; or the name 

 applied to one of its varietal forms — hyloscopus, watching over woodland; 

 Poocetes, a dweller in meadow grass, is a poem in itself, and Hesperiphona, the 

 sunset voice — is the golden glow of the West. 



That dual personality that haunts most of us is strangely alive in the orni- 

 thologist. Even in the most rigidly scientific devotee, in whom the pleasure 

 seems altogether to be in the pursuit of the determining character or the qualify- 

 ing title, there is still joy in the living bird and its background. And often this 

 deeper scientific knowledge brings a deeper and more real appreciation of the 

 esthetic quality of bird life. Bliss Perry has somewhere remarked on two con- 

 trasted points of view regarding the Skylark — two definitions that stand for 

 the poetic and the scientific type of mind. "In the Century Dictionary," says 

 Mr. Perry, "the Skylark is described as a small oscine, passerine bird of the 

 family Alaudida? . . . insectivorous and migratory; in your Shelley the same 

 bird is pictured as an unbodied joy." Now these two definitions are both admir- 

 able and both may be entertained by the same mind, and I hold that to the 

 catholic spirit the first — the scientific definition — is rich in poetic suggestion. 

 What more delightful conception than that of oscine — the ancient name for a 

 divining bird, one whose notes were augural, whose syrinx — a reed pipe borrowed 



