102 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
THE ALTERATION OF OLD-ESTABLISHED BIRD: 
NAMES. 
A PROTEST. 
(By W. W. Froggatt.) 
' Amonest recent writers on Australian Birds there has arisen. 
a tendency to change the established popular names of birds. 
Certain birds have been widely known right down from the: 
time of Gould, by particular names, for the most part given: 
by that great observer himself. Gould had a specially happy 
knack of adopting native and popular names, and these have: 
ever since been accepted and used by hosts of students and: 
observers of our avifauna. Not only is the indiscriminate 
changing of these names most confusing to the young natur- 
alist, but it is a source of annoyance and loss of time to the. 
advanced student who may have occasion to use the works in 
which such changes of nomenclature have been adopted. It 
seems a pity that this procedure should have been followed: 
in such works as the just published ‘“‘Birds of Australia” by- 
Lucas and le Souef, amd the previous volume, ““The Animals. 
of Australia,’’ by the same authors. 
A few instances may be cited. Every one on our coast 
knows as the ‘‘Bell Bird’’ that dainty little olive green 
Honey-eater of our forests, with its quaint bell-like note. 
Kendall has immortalised it in his poem ‘‘Bell Birds.’” 
Gould calls it Manorhina melanophyrs, Bell-bird. Wheel- 
wright (Old Bushman), in his ‘‘Bush Wanderings of a Natur- 
alist’? (published in 1861), describes it in the Gippsland 
forests as the Bell-bird. Now some of the modern bird men 
have decided that the ‘‘Bell-bird” is not the ‘“‘Bell-bird,”’ 
but the ‘‘Bell-Minah”’ ; they have transferred the name ‘‘Bell- 
bird” to a Shrike Thursh, Oreoica cristata, described -by: 
Lewin and long known popularly as the Crested Oreoica. 
_This bird chiefly frequents the inland portion of Australia, 
and its claim to the popular name of our little bird is that 
some local settlers call it the ‘‘Bell-bird.’’ Again, Hall, in 
his ‘‘Insectiverous Birds of Victoria,’’ calls the same bird 
simply the ‘‘Bell-bird,’’ not even the ‘‘Crested Bell-bird,”’ 
which would have been a sufficiently distinctive title. Camp- 
bell follows the same example, and now we find it perpetu- 
ated in the new “‘Birds of Australia.’’ North, on the other 
hand, very rightly retains the name ‘‘Bell-bird’”’ for the little 
coastal honey-eater, and calls the western bird the ‘‘Crested 
Bell-bird.’’ 
