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Review.



REVIEW.


“A LIST OF BRITISH BIRDS.”


The Committee of the British Ornithologists’ Union has, with

great pains and careful labour, compiled a fresh and most helpful

list of British Birds, the number of which is recognised as 475 in

all, of which 188 are regular breeding birds and 286 are non-breeding,

and one is extinct, viz., the Great Auk.


The List is sub-divided into Residents (141).


Summer Visitors (47) and Winter Visitors (46).


Birds of Passage, i.e., those which are only found during the

spring and autumn migration periods (30), and Occasional Visitors,

i.e., birds which have occurred on more than twenty occasions (61).


We are glad to find much assistance and lucidity in the

nomenclature, it having been the object of the Committee to use

the oldest name for each genus and species, commencing from 1758,

so that some of the more modern titles have been discarded.

Trinomials (detestable things ! ) have been thrown aside as much

as possible, although one wishes ornithologists could manage to

style the British Bullfinch, Pyrrhula pileata, instead of Pyrrhula

pxyrrhula pileata ; but that is one step better than Pyrrhula pyrrhula

pyrrhula ! The Song Thrush, too, is dubbed Turdus musicus, instead

of Turdus musicus musicus, which latter sounds as if it was applied

to a Thrush who was a sort of Caruso !


What, amongst other things, especially commends itself in

this list, is the derivation of the names from the Latin and Greek ;

for instance, to many members of the Avicultural Society, individuals

who have perhaps left their schoolroom and school days some way

behind, and who might possibly be puzzled as to Coccothraustes

(the generic name for the Hawfinches), we find that that jaw¬

breaking title=the kernel-breaker: from Kokkos and Thrauo (to

put it in English lettering). And these derivations make quite an

interesting study, so much so that in the future one fully expects

members of the Society will no longer write in articles that the

Pine-Grosbeak ” (for instance) has successfully reared young in

captivity, but rather, “ It may interest members to know that my

pair of Pinicola enucleator ” has successfully done so ; since after



