ON THE GENUS PITTA. 



By Mr. G. D. ROWLEY. 



" ToS Si T, avevOev eovTi, fxeKavrepov, rjvTe iriaaa^j 

 Waiver lov Kara ttovtovJ' 



Homer : Iliad, iv. 277. 



What is a Pitta? What does it mean? In vain do we turn to the works 

 of various authors, one after another, to find an answer. We read many 

 valuable contributions to ornithology ; but none tell us what we want 

 to know. 



Although Homer's poetic comparison of the son of Atreus reviewing 

 the troops of the two Ajaces, to a goatherd looking at a waterspout as 

 it traverses the deep, occurs to the minds of all of us when the word 

 Pitta is mentioned, yet we wish that (in 1816) Vieillot had selected 

 something prettier for a genus which, in our estimation, is essentially 

 beautiful and worthy of it. 



But though most people would imagine this ornithological word 

 to have a classical derivation, and one dictionary of scientific terms 

 positively states that it has, yet Vieillot most probably got the name 

 from De Montbeillard, with an Indian origin for it, and it is not 

 classical at all. 



^ irlaaaj Att. irlTra, r}, pitch. 



2n 2 



