CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



461 



from patches of shallow swamps, the frequency of the burrows of the 

 Strix cunicularia, might be mistaken for the holes of the millions of 

 crabs, that crawl through the contiguous morass, if it were not that 

 beside being high and dry in the perpendicular breaks of the ground, 

 they wanted the ridge of recent mud which encircled the crab holes. 

 It was here, indeed, that I first remarked that this species, like its 

 congeners, preys on the lesser birds. I collected, scattered at the 

 entrance of their burrows, feathers of the golden banded oriole, of the 

 boat tailed grackle {Gr acuta barita) and of the ground dove ( Turtur 

 passarina) all birds that frequented the vicinity of their haunts. That 

 difference in their owl nature, which adapts them for revelling like 

 birds of day in the luxury of sun-light, is as striking a circumstance, 

 when they have once caught the attention of a common observer, as 

 their burrowing propensities. It is certain that in the island of Haiti, 

 they are the elaborators of their own cavern home. There is no animal 

 there of equal size which has the same habit. In the ravines where 

 clusters of shrubs overhang the steeps, so as to supply the wonted 

 leafy covert to a small, very diminutive, but brilliantly green sort of 

 muscicapa, with crimson breast, called by the Spanish Haitiens the 

 barrancali *, and by the French the perroquet de terre, a bird that 

 burrows in the earth also, the excavations of both may be found 

 together, notwithstanding the certain fact that the burrowing owl is 

 predacious." 



Sept, 16, 1833. R. H. L. 



CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



Faults in zoological nomenclature. — Though nomenclators, 

 who take a pride in the manufacturing of names, and fight among 

 themselves, as to which of them shall have the honour of appending his 

 name to them, hoping that by thrusting a Jack Scroggins-of-a-name 

 into notice, it will be handed down to posterity, may be inclined to 

 consider it as presumption in one not quite as learned and ambitious as 

 themselves, to call for a repeal of the following generic appellations, so 



* This bird called barrancali by the Spaniards, from barranca, the name for an 

 earthy ravine cliff, is thus described by Drouin de Bercy, " Le perroquet de terre 

 est ainsi nomme, parcequ' il fait son nid dans la terre; il est gros comme une 

 fauvette : il a le dos vert comme une emeraux, la gorge rose, le ventre gris de lin, 

 legerement rose, les pattes noires, et le bee rouge brun en forme de lancette." 



VOL. I. — NO. X. (OCTOBER, 1833.) M M 



