THE



293



Bvicultural fllbagasme,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCI ETY.



Third Series—\J OL. III. — No. 11. —A U rights reserved. S E PT EMBER, 1912.



NESTING OF THE BLACK REDSTART.


Ruticilia tit vs.


By W. E. Tkschemaker, B.A.


The old- saying—“ what’s in a name ? ” certainly does not

apply to Ornithology, for nomenclature has always been a bone

of contention among ornithologists, and at the present moment

it might be said to be the question of the hour. The origin

of some of the more obscure names of birds is really quite an

interesting study iu itself, that is to say, considered apart from

the vexed question of scientific nomenclature. So let us consider

for a few moments the various names that have been applied to

the present species. “ Redstart ” of course means “ red-tail,”

“start” being obviously the Anglo-Saxon word “ steort ” ; the

German name “ rothschwanz" is an exact equivalent, and also

the Spanish “ colirojo" and the Latin “ ruticilla."


In the Linnaeau “ motacilla" we have an exact equivalent

to the early English name “quick-start.” We seem to have no

equivalent, however, amongst English synonyms, to the German

popular name “ hatisrothschwanz ” (house-red-tail). We now

come to the name “ titys ,” which is a bit of a puzzle. Scopoli

wrote “ tithys” but he admittedly simply copied the word

(erroneously) from Linnaeus, who spelt it as above. It looks

rather like a proper name extracted from Greek mythology, but

no name at all like it is to be found, except Tityos, the gentle¬

man whose liver was perpetually torn by vultures in the nether¬

world. What then could Linnaeus have had in his mind when



