A CONFUSION OF TONGUES.
IT began with a friend of mine, who, finding himself with more leisure time on his hands than he had enjoyed since the war, took up the study of animal names in Hiawatha. This led to various inquiries from museum authorities and others concerning the nomenclature of the fauna of Canada, and the further we pushed our inquiries the more intricate grew the labyrinth in which we were involved. Few countries are so well equipped as is Canada for the confusion and bewilderment of the layman in zoology. He finds that, in the matter of names, there are various schools in England—to begin with. He finds the same state of affairs in the United States. The early settlers, who gave English names haphazard to the birds and beasts on this continent (North America), appear to have been singularly unobservant, to have named certain species from some fanciful and 'quite superficial resem- blance to a totally different species in Europe, and to have failed altogether, in some cases, to recognize identical species where such do occur.
The French settlers were responsible for very much the same trouble, in the Province of Quebec especially. To make matters worse, the Indian names varied, as was to be expected, with different localities and the dialects peculiar thereto. The general tendency, even among naturalists, to-day seems to be to encourage, as far as possible, the use of simple English names for ordinary colloquial purposes— which is what the average layman specially desiderates. And this is precisely where the trouble begins for the average amateur. Take first the case of the birds. The ruffed grouse is called indiscriminately " willow grouse," " partridge,' and even, in some parts, pheasant." The cormorant is known as the " black loon," " crow- duck," and " rubber-neck," from the manner in which it can distend the neck in the act of swallowing. The grebes are popularly lumped together under the name of " hell- divers." The " migratory thrush " is universally called the " robin." The pileated woodpecker used to be known by the rather pretty onomatopoeic name of " wood-wale." The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrines ante,) is here the " duck hawk." Cranes and herons are hopelessly mixed up ; and, worse still, throughout the West the sandhill crane is called the " wild turkey." The red-headed Canadian turkey-buzzard is a " vulture," and the carrion crow in the South is a " black vulture." The " mudherk " (gallinule) is also designated the " rice-bird," suggesting the idea that it is a delicacy which it emphatically is not. Similarly, the Pacific eider is locally known as the " canvas- back " ; while his plumage is perhaps even more like rough canvas than is that of his celery-fed congener further East, he certainly would not be so much in demand in a New York restaurant The Canada goose, the " honker " of the West, is commonly known throughout Quebec as the " Outarde," which is European French for " bustard." It happened recently that formal notices of certain changes in the close season for various birds were issued by the Government and placarded about the country. Included among them was the " Outarde." Shortly afterwards an official, finding them exposed for sale during the pro- hibited season in the city of Quebec, entered the shop and charged the proprietor with infringing the law. The latter retorted by impugning the correctness of the name, and the notices had to be recalled and amended by the addition of the name " Bernache " in parentheses. But, according to the dictionaries, the word " Bernache " is the same as our " barnacle " or " bernacle," which is a brant and therefore much smaller than the Canada goose, besides being exclusively a salt-water bird. The white- fronted goose is called a brant " in the Mississippi valley and a wavey " in Oregon. Now " wavey ' is the " wa-wa " of Hiawatha, which is properly pronounced " way-way " and not " wah-wah." " Bobolink " is the popular name for what was originally called the " rice troopml. ' In the same way " whip-poor- will " has supplanted " Carolina nightjar." The " flicker " used to be the " golden-winged woodpecker." The " thrasher " is short for ferruginous thrush," and " chick- adee " is more melodious than black-capped titmouse." The goldfinch is " wild canary," or, more simply, " canary." The " tyrant flycatcher " has been cut down to the more prosaic king-bird." The pectoral sandpiper is always known as the " jack snipe." The " blackbird " in this country is the common name for the bronzed grackle, although Mr. Thompson Seton notes that an intelligent small boy of his acquaintance preferred to speak of it as the " fantail blackbird."
The case of the mammals is just as bad. The late D. G. Elliot deemed it necessary systematically to coin English names for most of the American forms, considering it desirable to provide every single species and sub- species with a vernacular form. The result, as the Journal of Alammalogy points out, was deplorable. Here are a few instances picked at random from a list quoted : " The irrational shrew," " the graceful bat," " the cap- tious harvest mouse," " the beautifully garbed chip- munk," " the cunning red-backed vole," the sand- frequenting pocket gopher," " the autocrat timber wolf," " the happy chipmunk," " the curtailed fox," " the degenerate otter." Even had these names conformed better with the requirements of Mr. Thompson Seton—viz., that they should be short and pat, monosyllabic if possible, other- wise accented on the first syllable, and different from other names—the attempt was foredoomed to failure, for the simple reason that other appellations had taken root already, and that these varied hopelessly in different districts. For instance, the pocket gopher is called a salamander in Florida. The moose in Canada is the elk (elgr) in Norway and other countries. The elk in Canada is synonymous to-day with the wapiti, who is the king of the Red Deer tribe. But " wapiti " is a Cree word and means " white sheep." The misnomer, as I am informed by Major Allan Brooks, the well-known animal painter, is due to the fact that Sir John Richardson asked the Crees what animal they knew which most resembled the caribou. They replied " wapakka " (the final a is almost mute), meaning the white mountain sheep. or goat. Sir John, who had never seen the wild sheep, imagined that the name indicated the North American stag, and the error has been perpetuated. " Apiti-akka "— little goat antelope." " Apitimosos "— little moose "- " caribou."
The French word " elan," used sometimes for the moose, is akin to " elk," though more closely so to the African " eland." The common French-Canadian designation for the moose is, of course, " an Indian word. To cap the climax, " elk " appears also to be the name of a species of wild swan. The striped chipmunk is called by the Quebecois " le suisse," apparently from a fancied resemblance to the gorgeously attired beadle who mounts guard at church doors in Old France.
The main difference between a hare and a rabbit is popularly supposed to be that the latter burrows and produces its young naked and blind, while the former couches above ground and its young are born with their fur coats on. This may be the reason why there are no rabbits (properly so called) in Canada. But you would much astonish the average Canadian if you told him so. For the " le us Americanise," who resembles the " blue " hare of Scotland and Ireland, is universally known as the " rabbit " in the West and as " le lapin; " in Quebec. The " book name " for the " jack rabbit " is " jackass hare," while the " varying hare " has to be content with the more homely title of snowshoe rabbit." The " nephitic weasel " is the " skunk " in the ver- nacular, the " Alaskan sable " in the fur-trade, the " pistols " in more polite French society, and the " bete puante " among the habitants. The bay lynx is more simply the " bob-cat " to-day, and the bighorn, or moun- tain sheep (Avail, of the books), is just plain " sheep " in and about the Rockies.
Of course, when these names have once become firmly rooted in the soil, it is hopeless to try to change them, and the naturalists of to-day seem to be agreed that in this case vox populi is vox del, and that the vernacular name is often, more expressive and more useful than the scientific or literary form. Even the " American robin " ha's at last asserted its -title to a definite place- in the scientific lists. 'In fact, the wheel has gone round full circle, for Major Allan Brooks relates that, while he was in England during the war, he heard many Americans and some Canadians remark, on seeing our English robin : " For Heaven's sake ! Look at what they call a robin over here ! Suppose they call him a robin because he's got a red breast.' • .And yet again : " They've got queer ideas about birds over here. The bird they call a blackbird sings." Whereas a mounted policeman, a new arrival in Canada, is reported to have said : " Sure it's a great Look at the fine fat robins they have."
QUEBEC.
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