37 2 Correspondence.


CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.



NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS.


Sir, — I am delighted to learn that so many of the American birds

which I sent to the London Zoo. arrived there safely. It is an honor

nowadays to be instrumental in adding a new species to the long list of

those which have made their home in that well-known institution, and I

was indeed surprised when I saw from the list in the Avicultural Magazine

that no fewer than eighteen were formerly unrepresented. A word as to

these birds may be of interest to those of yonr readers who have not had

the opportunity of observing them in the United States.


They comprise the commonest migrants in our Eastern States, and it.

seems at first inexplicable that they should be unknown in English

collections. The reason is easy to imagine however. From the multitudes

of English birds which reach us through dealers, and from the notices

which appear in the papers, every third country man and boy on your

Island seems to be an expert trapper, while with us, not one fanner or boy

in ten thousand knows how to trap a bird, or to feed it after he takes it

from the nest. He knows only how to shoot it. All the collections of

living birds in the United States have been chiefly of foreign species, with

native birds absent or sparsely represented, and now, stringent laws wisely

forbid the keeping of native birds by private individuals.


The collection of native birds in the New York Zoological Park is

without doubt the largest ever made in the country, and with its exhaustive

labelling is of the greatest economic value in teaching thousands of people

the usefulness of birds and the advisability of protecting them. Even the

making of this collection was no exception to the rule of the superiority of

the English in trapping, for part of it is due to the keenness and skill of an

English keeper.


Our native Warblers have never been kept in confinement until within

the last two years, so I was especially glad to be able to send representatives

of this family, the Mniotiltidce, of which we Americans think so highly.

May I suggest that you have made an error in the naming of the Oven-bird,

Dendroica discolor being the small and very different Prairie Warbler, while

the correct name for the Oven-bird is Seiurus aurocapiltus (Linn.). Although

only four species of warblers were sent, they are well representative of the

wonderful adaptive radiation of this unusual family ; the Yellow Warbler

being perhaps typical; the Redstart showing the habits, broad mandibles

and bristles of a Flycatcher, and the Water-Thrush with the wading habits

and teetering motion of a Sandpiper.


Our Chickadee looks strange to our eyes under his new name of

Titmouse, but as our English ancestors first called him Chickadee there is

no reason why Englishmen of to-day should not replace it with another if



