﻿VERNACULAR NOMENCLATURE. 



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are inserted, may be altered. The goatsucker may 

 be called the nightjar ; the hedge-sparrow, flitwing, 

 which will be rather better than shufflewing, and so on. 

 But then the question arises, who can expect that this 

 new nomenclature will be adopted by unscientific per- 

 sons, — the great bulk of our population, — for whom 

 this improvement of nomenclature is alone intended ? 

 They may answer, and very truly, 6C Make as many re- 

 forms in your classic names as you choose ; but pray 

 allow us to call a bird by the name that we and the 

 people about us have known it from infancy. Your 

 new name of flitwing may be very pretty and appropriate, 

 but I care nothing about its being a finch or a war- 

 bler. We know it, about us, as the hedge-sparrow ; 

 with that name are associated early recollections, by that 

 name I can make myself understood, and therefore by 

 that name I shall continue to call it." Such will natu- 

 rally be the reply of a country gentleman when asked 

 to adopt our new scale of names, and teach them to 

 his dependants. Again : admitting that appropriate 

 English names should be used, who is to invent them ? 

 Once attempt to destroy the received nomenclature, and 

 every field naturalist, every tyro of ornithology will con- 

 tend for the name he likes best. The long- tailed tit- 

 mouse, for instance, has the following names by which 

 it is known in different counties : — Huckmuck, bottle- 

 torn, longtail-mag, longtail-capon, and mumruffln.* 

 The yellow wren, which in fact is not a wren, but a 

 Sylvia (S< trochilus, L.), is called also willow- wren, 

 ground- wren, and ground huckmuck. t A choice must 

 be made from these, and by whom ? Whatever re- 

 forms, therefore, which experienced ornithologists, no 

 less than intelligent amateurs will admit, must be few 

 and judicious, giving in general the generic or family 

 name to the species ; calling, for instance, all the or- 

 dinary species of the Sylviadce, warblers, except, in- 



* Montagu, Ornithological Dictionary. We have heard it called, also 

 bottle-tit. 

 f Ibid. 



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