1958 SHORT COMMUNICATIONS 125

SHORT COMMUNICATIONS ALAUDA ARVENSIS I N BORNEO.

On 23 November 1950, driving home from the Sarawak Museum, Kuching, past the capital’s golf-course, I noted six lark-like birds on the fairway. Two days later I took one for identification : 9, wing 106; food, small insects, one grass seed. I unthinkingly assumed this was Mirafra javanica, resident in S.E. Borneo but not previously known in Sarawak (where we therefore have no lark reference material).

The skin was included in a lot sent for checking to the British Museum (Natural History) recently. Mrs. B. P. Hall and Mr. R. W. Sims promptly recognised it as A. arwensis. Mr. Sims writes that the plumage is too worn for racial identification. It does, however, match similarly worn winter birds from Sining Ho, N. Kansu, China; but not the resident Siamese race, herberti Hartert.

The genus Alauda has not before been recorded in Asia south of Siam and the Philippines. Sarawak Museum. TOM HARRISSON.

6 September 1957.

T H E BRISSONIAN NAME FOR T H E SNIPE. The six volume Ornithologia of Mathurin Jacques Brisson bearing the

date 1760, with its detailed descriptions, marks the author as the foremost ornithologist of his time, although now he is remembered mainly for a number of his generic names which remain in our current system of nomenclature. These are accepted on the basis that Brisson was a binary author, and we may regret that he did not become familiar with the system proposed in the tenth edition of Linnaeus in time to establish valid specific names also, since this would have simplified numerous modern problems.

In Paris Brisson had exceptional opportunity to examine specimens of birds, particularly in the RCaumur collection, world-wide in scope, and a large part of his exact descriptions were drawn from actual examples. In the preface of his work, printed in volume 1 : xiv-xix, he outlined his scheme of classification of 26 orders containing 115 genera under which he arranged the approximately 1500 species and varieties known to him. The genera, each with its diagnosis, are numbered in sequence with Roman numerals. The species bear Arabic numbers, which under each genus begin a new series with the number 1.

These details were well known to the systematists of 50 years ago, and were fully outlined by J. A. Allen in a paper entitled “ Collation of Brisson’s Genera of Birds with those of Linnaeus ”, published in ‘ Bull. Amer. Mus.

126 SHORT COMMUNICATIONS IBIS 100

Nat. Hist.’ 28 : 317-335, 11 November 1910. The valid Brissonian genera are found throughout our current literature, and there has been agreement that Brisson’s terms for species, sometimes a single word and sometimes two words or a phrase, are not binomial and may not be used. It is therefore of interest to note that the International Commission of Zoological Nomen- clature in its Direction 39, issued 17 September 1956, has ordered that “ Gallinago Brisson, 1760 ” be placed on the accepted list of generic names to replace Gallinago Koch, 1816, which is antedated by Capella Frenzel, 1801.

Turning to Brisson’s Ornithologia of 1760 we find in vol. 5 : 292, in the right hand column in Latin, “ LXXVII. Genus Scolopacis” with the appropriate diagnosis, which details the form of the foot and bill, and then continues to list five species assigned to this genus. The Latin diagnosis for each species begins with the generic name Scolopax followed by the characters, with the specific term for the bird concerned at the end. Species number 1 is obviously the Old World woodcock designated in Brisson’s terminology Scolopax Scolopax. The second species, with which we are concerned, is as follows :

“ **2. La Becassine Voyez P1. XXVI, Fig. 1. Scolopax xxxx GALLINAGO.”

This is the second species in Brisson’s genus Scolopax distinguished by his specific term Gallinago from the four others included in the genus, with the description drawn from an actual specimen, as indicated by the two stars before the number and reference to a recognizable figure. The account is entirely that of a species, and it is this species term that the International Commission now rules is to be accepted as a genus,

In outline the classification of Brisson relative to his genus Scolopax is as follows :

Order XVII. Section V.

Genus LXXVII. Scolopax. **1. La Beccasse. Scolopax Scolopax. **2. La Beccassine. Scolopax Gallinago. **3. La petite Beccassine. Scolopax Gallinago minor.

4. La Beccassine de Madrast. Scolopax Gallinago Maderaspatana. 5. La Beccassine d’Angleterre. Scolopax Gallinago Anglicana.

It will be noted that specimens of the first three species were examined as is shown by the stars before the number. The remaining two are taken from the writings of Ray, and of Willoughby and Ray.

The name Capella Frenzel replacing Gallinago Koch for the snipes has been current in ornithological literature for nearly 30 years, particularly since the appearance of the fourth edition of the A.O.U. check-list in 1931, and of vol. 2 of Peters ‘ Check-list of Birds of the World ’ in 1934. After

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due consideration of the details outlined above the Committee on Classifi- cation and Nomenclature of North American Birds has continued Cupella in the fifth edition of the A.O.U. Check-list, since it would appear that the action of the International Commission attempts to validate as a genus a term that does not have generic status. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. ALEXANDER WETMORE.

July 1 9 5 7 .

CORRESPONDENCE THE BLUEBIRD IN BERMUDA.

S I R , - h his article on “The breeding birds of Bermuda ” (‘ Ibis ’ 1957 : 94-105), Dr. Bourne writes in regard to the Bluebird Sialia sialis that “ according to Reid it formerly nested in the open and laid white eggs ” (p. 103). “ In the period when it was unusually abundant the Bluebird forsook its hole-nesting habit and built nests in the open (Reid 1884) ” (p. 101). It is now “ common around houses, in gardens, around farms, and in all open spaces, . . . The nest and eggs are now typical for the species ” (p. 103).

These h;bits seemed so strange that I looked up Saville Reid’s paper (‘ Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1884: 163-279). He called t k Bpebird “very common”. “Eggs four or five, delicate pale blue, unspotted. Nest of grasses and bents, in all manner of places. I have found them commonly in holes in old quarries or roadside cuttings ; also in crevices of walls ; in rocks, even when some little distance from the shore; in holes in trees; on the branches of trees; in stove and water-pipes; in cala- bashes, boxes, etc.. hung up for them in the verandahs of houses; in the folds of a canvas awning outside the door of one of the officer’s quarters at Prospect Camp; and in several other curious situations. . . . It occasionally drives the Red Bird Cardinalis wirginianus from its nest, even after eggs have been laid, and uses it for a foundation for its own ” (p. 175).

In this wide variety of sites, all but two appear to be in some kind of a cavity- “ On the branches of trees ” and in Cardinals’ nests. The most abundant tree on the Bermudas was the Bermuda Cedar Juniperus bermudiann ; this formerly attained a very great size and, in some cases at least seems to have offered dense cover, accord- ing to the report on the botany of Bermuda in the stme bulletin as that in which Reid’s article appears (pp. 35-141). saddled on a horizontal limb of an oak . . . about 1) inches in diameter ” is reported from South Carolina by A. C. Bent (‘ Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus.’ 1949 : 239); “ one or two twigs give support ”.

As to taking over Cardinals’ nests, these “bulky” structures, “built of twigs and roots, lined with dry grasses”, must have furnished a good foundation; perhaps the cedars provided cover. Bent mentions nests of the Bluebird “ in open hollows in the rotten tops of posts or stumps ”, while T. S. Roberts (Birds of Minnesota, 1932. 2 : 135) reports a nest “ sunk in the earth ”, “ among the plants of a cemetery urn ”.

It seems clear that the Bermuda Bluebirds 70 years ago laid eggs of the same colour as at present and for the most part nested in cavities. Their occasional vagaries in choice of nest site are matched by somewhat similar instances on the continent of North America.

5725 Harper Avenue,

11 September 1957.

A Bluebird nest

Chicago 37, Illinois, U.S.A. MARCARET M. NICE.

SrR,-Mrs. Nice has caught me at a disadvantage, remote from a library and without even a copy of my own paper to which I might refer. However, I find I have with me a note that A. H. Verrill quoted white eggs as a character of his hypothetical endemic race of the Bluebird (‘ h e r . Journ. Sci.’ 1901 : 64-65), and I have the impression that this is not the only record; I a m sorry I omitted them from my paper. I do not attach much importance to the observation since pale blue eggs are notoriously liable to fade on exposure to light.