VEENACULAR NOMEKCLATURE. 
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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, “ 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 o{ flitwing may be very pretty and appropriate, 
but I care nothing about its being a finch or a war- 
bler. lYe 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 caU 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, hottle- 
tom, longtail-mag, longtail-capon, and mumruffin.* 
The yellow wren, which in fact is not a wren, but a 
Sghia (A. trovhilus, L.), is called also willow-wren, 
ground-wren, and ground huckmuck. 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 Sylviadm, warblers, except, m- 
* Montagu, Ornithological Dictionary. We have heard it called, also^ 
bottle-tit, 
t Ibid. 
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