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Love's Meinie: Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds, a non-fiction book by John Ruskin |
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Lecture 3. The Dabchicks: 2. Allegretta Nymphaea. Lily-Ouzel |
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_ LECTURE III. THE DABCHICKS: II. ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA. LILY-OUZEL 93. We have got so far, by help of our first example, in the etymology of our entire class, as to rest in the easily memorable root 'dab,' short for dabble, as the foundation of comprehensive nomenclature. But the earlier (if not Aryan!) root 'dip,' must be taken good heed to, also, because, as we further study the customs of aquatic chickens, we shall find that they really mass themselves under the three great heads of 'Duckers,' birds that duck their heads only, and stick up their tails in the air;--'Dippers,' birds that take real dips under, but not far down, in shallow water mostly, for things at the bottom, or else to get out of harm's way, staying down about as long as we could ourselves, if we were used to it;--and 'Divers,' who plunge like stones when they choose,--can go nobody knows how deep in the deep sea,--and swim under the water just as comfortably as upon it, and as fast, if not faster. But although this is clearly the practical and poetical division, we can't make it a scientific one; for the dippers and dabblers are so like each other that we must take them together; and so also the duckers and divers are inseparable in some of their forms: so that, for convenience of classing, we must keep to the still more general rank I have given--dabchick, duck, and gull,--the last being essentially the aerial sea-bird, which _lives_ on the wing. 94. But there is yet one more 'mode of motion' to be thought of, in the class we are now examining. Several of them ought really to be described, not as dipchicks, but as _trip_-chicks; being, as far as I can make out, little in the habit of going under water; but much in the habit of walking or tripping daintily over it, on such raft or float as they may find constructed for them by water-lily or other buoyant leaves. Of these "come and trip it as you come" chicks,--(my emendation of Milton is surely more reasonable than the emendations of commentators as a body, for we do not, any of us, like to see our mistresses "trip it as they _go_")--there are, I find, pictured by Mr. Gould, three 'species,' called by him, Porzana Minuta, Olivaceous Crake; Porzana Pygmaea, Baillon's Crake; and Porzana Maruetta, Spotted Crake. Now, in the first place, I find 'Porzana' to be indeed Italian for 'water-hen,' but I can't find its derivation; and in the second place, these little birds are neither water-hens nor moor-hens, nor water-cocks nor moor-cocks; neither can I find, either in Gould, Yarrell, or Bewick, the slightest notice of their voices!--though it is only in implied depreciation of their quality, that we have any business to call them 'Crakes,' 'Croaks,' or 'Creaks.' In the third place, 'Olivaceous' is not a translation of 'Minuta,' nor 'Baillon's' of 'Pygmaea,' nor 'spotted' of 'Maruetta'; which last is another of the words that mean nothing in any language that I know of, though the French have adopted it as 'Marouette.' And in the fourth place, I can't make out any difference, either in text or picture, between Mr. Baillon's Crake, and the 'minute' one, except that the minute one is the bigger, and has fewer white marks in the center of the back. 95. For our purposes, therefore, I mean to call all the three varieties neither Crake nor Porzan, but 'Allegretta,' which will at once remind us of their motion; the larger one, nine inches long, I find called always Spotted Crake, so that shall be 'Allegretta Maculata,' Spotty Allegret; and the two little ones shall be, one, the Tiny Allegret, and the other the Starry Allegret (Allegretta Minuta, and Allegretta Stellaris); all the three varieties being generally thought of by the plain English name I have given at the head of this section, 'Lily-Ouzel' (see, in Sec. 7, page 5, the explanation of my system of dual epithet, and its limitations. I note, briefly, what may be properly considered distinctive in the three kinds.) _ |
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