128 Bird -Lore 



In all, he described and figured upward of one hundred species, and in 

 his plates seems to have been the first to group together birds and plants in 

 the manner later followed by Audubon, Gould and others. His descrip- 

 tions are recognizable and his brief accounts of the habits of the birds 

 interesting, though they frequently contain amusing myths obtained from the 

 settlers or the natives. 



Of the Wild Pigeon, or Pigeon of Passage, as he calls it, he says: "The 

 people of New York and Philadelphia shoot many of them as they fly, from 

 their balconies and the tops of their houses." The Mockbird of Catesby 

 upheld its reputation as a vocalist then as now, and imitated "all bird notes 

 from the Hummingbird to the Eagle" ; while this latter bird, whose head he 

 tells us, notwithstanding its name of bald, is as well feathered as any other 

 part of its body, pursued the 'Fishing Hawk' across Catesby's pages, just as 

 it has done in the works of his successors. 



The Purple Jackdaws — our Grackles — he tells us, "have a rank smell and 

 their flesh is coarse and black and is seldom eat," while their relative, the 

 Red -winged Starling, he was informed, can be taught to talk and sing in 

 captivity. The seasonal change in plumage of the Bobolink was noted by 

 this observant naturalist, but he sagely remai^ks, "When they return south 

 in the fall they are all hens," a mistake shared by later writers also. 



Our Blue Jay recalled the old-world Jay, having the same "jetting 

 motion," but it struck him as more tuneful. 



Two of our finest birds, now on the verge of extinction, Catesby de- 

 scribes with care, and includes some notes of much interest — these are the 

 Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the Carolina Parakeet. The large white beak 

 of the former, he tells, us is in great demand among the northern Indians, in 

 whose country the bird does not occur, and they trade for it with the more 

 southern tribes, giving two or three buckskins for each bill. After a good 

 account of the Parakeet, he adds the highly useful information, "Their guts 

 is certain and speedy poison to cats," — probably one of the first contributions 

 to economic ornithology in America. 



Catesby was the first describer, if not the actual discoverer, of most of 

 our familiar birds but, owing to no fault of his, this credit usually goes to 

 another. After the Latin names of these birds in our check-lists we usually 

 find the authority Linnaus, and by many the great Swedish botanist is 

 looked upon as their discoverer. As a matter of fact, Linnaeus was simply 

 the discoverer or rather the inventor of the 'Binomial System' of names, 

 which has been in use among naturalists ever since. Catesby and his con- 

 temporaries, in giving a Latin name to a bird, used as many words as they 

 deemed desirable; but Linnaeus recognized the utility of a system of two 

 words only, one for the genus and one for the species. Having applied 

 this successfully in his favorite study — botany, — he extended it to zoology, and 

 named all the described species on this plan, basing his names largely upon 



