106 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



B IRDS. 



Local Names of Wildfowl.— Can any correspondent say what are the 

 modern names of the wildfowl formerly termed pellstarts and smeathes? 

 I have lately been writing the history of Cheadle, in Cheshire, and in the 

 diary of Sir Wm. Brereton, the Parliamentary General, there are particulars 

 given of his 'coy (or decoy) at Handford Hall, his home, and the " shovelars, 

 teal, wigeon, pellstarts, and smeathes" that were taken there. The names 

 probably refer to Pintails and Smews ; but would they ever be common birds 

 inland in Cheshire? Handford or Handforth Hall is ten miles south of 

 Manchester, a beautiful old black and white house, with good staircase, and 

 a wonderfully inscribed porch of black oak dated 1562, erected by Wigan 

 Brereton, who married the heiress of the last of the Handfords (who fell at 

 Flodden), and who had been married and divorced from Sir John Stanley, 

 who also fought at Flodden. The site of the "decoy" is now a reservoir 

 for a calico-printing works, and ducks are accordingly scarce. — Fletcher 

 Moss (The Old Parsonage, Didsbury). 



[The word pell, diminutive of pool, means a broad shallow piece of water, 

 larger than a pond and smaller than a lake, A.S.pol, British pwl. In 

 Dutch it is poel, in German pfahl, Latin palus. Pell is in use in Sussex, 

 and signifies just such a place as wildfowl love to haunt. In Herefordshire 

 a pill is a small creek, which in Wales is called pil. This word is used on 

 the Severn, but occurs elsewhere in Celtic districts as a proper name. For 

 example, in Cornwall, on the Falmouth river, there is a village named Pill. 

 In Ireland also there is Pilltown in Co. Kilkenny, situate on a creek of the 

 Suir called the Pill, and Pilltown on the Blackwater, Co. Waterford. But 

 however suggestive this may be of wildfowl and their haunts, can this word 

 after all have anything to do with pell in pellstart? Start, of course, is the 

 A. S. steort, tail, seen in " Bedstart," and " Clubster," a local name for 

 the Stoat; but pellstart, if from A.S. pol steort, can have no intelligible 

 signification. It is more likely that the word is a corruption of " pile- 

 start," pile signifying an arrow, dart, or javelin. In this sense it would be 

 applicable enough to the Pintail, Dajila acuta. It would be interesting to 

 know whether pellstart or piles tart is still in use in any part of the country. 

 We have not found it in any of the Glossaries, ten or a dozen, to which we 

 have referred. Smeath, on the other hand, is given in several for the 

 Smew, Mergus albellus, which, from its piscivorous habits, is not at all likely 

 to be decoyed, though it might be taken in a decoy by accident. — Ed.] 



Notes on Grouse. — I have to thank Mr. Macpherson for his "explana- 

 tion," though it hardly seems to explain much. As I never saw my uucle's 

 bird described in print as a hybrid uutil I read the allusion to it in the 

 volume on the Grouse in Longman's " Fur and Feather " Series, 1 can 

 hardly have concurred in any "original records." I am informed by 



