148 ON BIRDS NAMES. 
with, As an example of an excellent use of provincialisms 
take the following pretty verse : 
“The sober laverock, warbling wide, 
Shall to the clouds aspire ; 
The goudspink, music’s gayest child, 
Shall sweetly join the choir ; 
The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, 
The mavis mild and mellow, 
The robin, pensive Autumn cheer 
In all her locks of yellow.” 
Now though four of the six birds here mentioned are 
called by names not commonly met with in our manuals, 
there is not a shadow of doubt as to the particular birds that 
Burns meant. 
As to names misapplied, there is a case of mounted birds 
in the exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution at the World’s 
Fair, that illustrates well the extent to which this evil has 
been carried in one direction. This contains a number of 
English and of American birds that are known by the same 
name in their respective countries, though they are quite 
different species. It is of course the Americans who are 
guilty of adopting English names for their own birds ; and 
the patriotism of our people, and their love of that language 
and literature which is the precious inheritance of both 
countries, must be appealed to, to mitigate the evil as much 
as possible. 
Some of these names are now ineradicable. “ Robin,” 
for instance, has come to stay, and will be applied both to the 
English Warbler (Zrythacus rubecula), and to the American 
Thrush (Merula migratoria), to the end of time. But many 
duplicate names can be avoided in speaking of American 
birds. Such names as Goldfinch, Bee-bird, Tree Sparrow, 
Blackbird, Ortolan, and Coot, are no better for the birds 
often so called, than Yellow-bird, King-bird, Winter Chippy, 
Grackle, Sora, and Scoter; and the first mentioned really 
belong to European birds. 
