(To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR, I was
rather surprised to see in the article on the moor hen in your last issue, by Mr. Douglas Gordon, that there is still some difficulty in understanding how the bird came to be called by this name. I thought it was generally recognized now, at any rate by ornithologists, that the Anglo-Saxon " mor," from which the syllable " moor " is derived (I will not trouble you with the variations in High Middle and Low German), originally signified a marsh or morass, and may indeed be cognate with the Anglo-Saxon " mere," a lake; so that the title is gradually reduced to " mere-hen," which is by no meant inappropriate. Similarly, I imagine there would be no great difficulty, by referring to the etymology, in explaining why tl a word " hen" should form the second syllable.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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