77



My Yellow-hammers are not succeeding any better this year, but I

hope soon to take them out into the fields, and let them hear their brethren,

and then I trust they may learn their song correctly. It would be interest¬

ing to have the experience of others who have hand-reared birds out of

hearing of their parents. I have had several bullfinches, but it is almost

impossible to draw any conclusion from these, as no two bullfinches seem

to me to have quite the same song. H. B. R.



FOREIGN FINCHES AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.


Sir, —Mr. Fillmer refers me to the British Museum Catalogue, which,

he says, is the generally recognised highest English authorial^ on the

nomenclature of birds. It ma} r be what he claims for it; I do not know, not

having seen it. Be that as it may, however, for my part I prefer to accept

the information I received from the importer of the waxbills in question,

who has a life-long and daily practical experience in these matters, to the

theorizing and speculations of so-called scientists who are, like aviculturists,

generally very much dependent upon practical men for their information.

I refer to Mr. Abrahams, who is the father of us all in these matters. I

don’t myself pose as an authority by any means—far from it—but simply

rely on information thus received, and my understanding of Latin to

translate into plain English the scientific names given to each species by

men who presume, or are presumed, to know. But Mr. Fillmer says, “it is

not essential, although usually convenient, that the English name should be

a translation of the scientific name.” If scientific names are not intended

to reveal, but rather to obscure, the English meaning, then I ask what is the

use of scientific names at all ? They are a delusion and a snare. Rufus

means red, and cauda a tail, clearly showing that this species should be and

was intended to be known as the red-tailed finch or waxbill. At the same

time, I quite agree with Mr. Fillmer that the red face or head is a more out¬

standing feature of the bird (at least of the cock), than the tail; and that red¬

headed finch might have been quite as. if not more, appropriate a name had

the scientific nomenclature permitted it, or scientists thought of it. Pro¬

bably they had in view the difference of sex-marking.


Similarly, Pectus means breast not crest, and hence wdiite-breasted,

not white-crested, is the correfit name of my finch in the other class.

Mr. Fillmer admits this to have been a blunder, but blames the printer for

it. He is a terrible fellow the printer! He makes Mr. Fillmer say white-

crested and you, Sir, blue-crested (see Feathered World report) when all the

time both of you meant and wrote white-breasted.


As to the Weaver-birds, Mr. Fillmer exonerates me from all blame and

ignorance, so that we are at one on that point.


In conclusion, I cannot understand Mr. Fillmer thinking my w'axbills

to be both cocks. His memory is playing him false. I can assure him a

clearer case of cock and hen could not possibl} 7 be. In size, colour, and

marking, the one is simply an adumbration of the other, and the expression

of face and eye is altogether different. What Mr. Fillmer regards as the

characteristic feature of the species is almost entirely absent in the hen, and

the spots are fewer and smaller. The tails, however, are identical, and this

may account for the name. His friend. Mr. Dewar, successfully shewed a

pair of the same species at Glasgow and Edinburgh last autumn as cock and

hen, and they were similarly marked, and were exhibited as “ Estrelda

ruficaudaP John Smart.


[I certainly wrote “ white-breasted ” in the notes I sent to the

Feathered World, and as I had no opportunity of correcting the proof, I am

not responsible for any printer’s error that may have occurred.


I most strongly dissent from Mr. Smart’s opinion that the work of

Dr. Bowdler Sharpe and other writers of the British Museum Catalogue is

“ the theorizing and speculations of so-called scientists.”—C. S. Simpson.]



