hermaphrodite etymologies-by which we mean words compounded of two roots which are taken from different languages are very rare, and to be received with suspicion, Talbot has suggested that our word may have been originally the French or Norman "la dormeuse," the second syllable of which would soon be corrupted, by country people, into mouse.

The word mouse, itself, is a very ancient and wide-spread name. In Anglo-Saxon it is mus; in German, maus; in Latin, mus; in Greek, mūs. It is ordinarily derived from a root which is expressed in the Greek μvev, to hide, although Pott considers that it may come from the Sanscrit mush, to steal.

Rat is the French rat, and appears in modern Latin as rattus. Wachter refers its origin to the German reissen; Anglo-Saxon, hreddan; our own rid; to which the Latin rodo, to gnaw, is akin. The name, therefore, may combine the ideas of gnawing and plundering. It is difficult to account for the name of Norway rat, as this species is aboriginal to Asia, and was not even known to exist in Norway when our name was given to it. There is an ill-natured tradition that it was introduced to our country by the same ship as brought in the Hanover dynasty; but this throws no light on the name: more probably it was imported on board of some Norwegian trader, which may have touched at one of our ports.

Conjectures

Hare is a word that has sadly puzzled etymologists. concerning its origin are innumerable, and, as it has no equivalent in the Latin and its kindred languages, its affinities are very hard to trace. It is the Anglo-Saxon hara, and it is the same word in Swedish. In Dutch and German the r gives way to s, as it is Dutch haas, German hase. One very plausible conjecture is that the word is akin to the Anglo-Saxon hær, hair; from the long soft fur of the hare. It has been suggested to me by a friend that it may come from the same root as our hoar, hoary; Anglo-Saxon, hara; in allusion to its prevailing colour. Talbot says, "Hare, the most timorous of animals, is perhaps named from the Anglo-Saxon earg, timid; earh, swift." Leveret is the French liêvre, Latin lepus, and is closely akin to the French lapin, rabbit. Indeed a close search will reveal to us a very curious connexion existing between the names for the hare and rabbit, in the kindred languages. The root is to be found in the Latin levis and our word leap, indicative of lightness and agility.

Rabbit is akin to the Dutch robbe, which probably comes, as Skinner suggests, from the Latin rapidus, our rapid. It would not be difficult to establish the etymological identity of this word with the

French lapin, and, so, with lepus, leveret, &c., but the pages of the 'Zoologist' are hardly suited to such an attempt.

Cony is the Latin cuniculus; German, canichen; Danish, kanig; Welsh, cuningen. Pliny supposes cuniculus to be so named from its burrows, but this can hardly be the case. In Greek we find the forms κόνικλος and κυνικλος, but there is some doubt as to whether this be a genuine Greek word, or only the Greek way of writing the word which they borrowed from the Romans. Should it be a truly Greek word, I have little doubt that Mr. Bell's etymology from xovéw, to hasten, would be correct, supported as it is by the analogy of the names for leveret and rabbit.

The Guinea pig is hardly an indigenous animal, but as Mr. Bell gives it a place in his 'History of British Quadrupeds,' we may take the opportunity of pointing out the solution of a difficulty which he seems to have experienced. He says, "The name by which this little animal is commonly known is founded upon an error of which I have in vain endeavoured to trace the origin; for I do not find, in any author by whom it is mentioned, any allusion to its being a native of Guinea. The country from which it truly derives its origin is the southern part of the South American Continent,-Brazil, Guiana, &c." Obviously its name originally alluded to the latter province; but as this was an unfamiliar name to most people, while Guinea was a "household word," the substitution of the wrong name for the right one would follow almost as a matter of course.

I have now completed the task which I at first proposed to myself; and I would fain hope that at all events some readers of the 'Zoologist' have been interested in the remarks I have made. I must again repeat one of my preliminary observations, that I have no doubt I may have made many mistakes. I therefore most earnestly solicit a personal correspondence with any one who is willing to correct me or to afford me hints. I have now collected the origins of about 2600 names of animal, vegetable or mineral objects, and I have exhausted all the means of information within my own reach, and have still a stock of at least 1200 names of which I can find no explanation, but with regard to which I trust that others will be found both willing and able to assist me.

Guildford, November 19, 1857.

P. H. NEWNHAM.

On Bavarian Sporting.

By the Rev. ALFRED CHARLES SMITH, M.A.

I HAVE just been reading (Zool. 5806-7) Dr. Collingwood's graphic account of the game-market at Vienna, and his description brings vividly to my recollection a similar scene at Munich, in the winter of 1840-1, which I spent in that capital; and on looking back to my journals of that date, by way of refreshing my memory on the subject, I have stumbled on some memoranda of various royal hunts of which I was an eye-witness, and by which these markets were supplied. Thinking that perhaps a short description of them may be of interest to the readers of the 'Zoologist,' I venture to transcribe again from my journals; but, for the benefit of those who have had no experience of Munich in the winter, I will first say a few words of that capital and its climate during the cold months, when these royal battues took place. I will premise, then, that Munich is the highest capital in Europe, though, not having a Murray at hand, I cannot state accurately how many feet it stands above the level of the sea. It is situated in a vast plain, or rather in the centre of a large basin, surrounded indeed by mountains, but all of them at a great distance; and on whichever side of the city you may approach you will see for many a league the great kettle-drum-looking domes or cupolas on the summit of the two towers of the Dom Kirche, standing up as beacons to guide you on to your journey's end. The plain, too, in which the city stands is truly Bavarian, not only so vast and apparently interminable, but perfectly flat, and its surface unbroken by hedges, banks or any other kind of fence, since fences are not wanted in a country where the cattle are never turned out to grass; and in the autumn, when the crops are off the ground, you may strike off from the highway immediately after leaving the town, and ride in any direction, so long as the open weather lasts. But though Munich is one of the sultriest and certainly the very dustiest of towns in the summer, it is one of the very coldest in the winter, without shelter on any side, and exposed to all the winds of heaven: for four months the weather is very severe, and the cold is intense; and there is no gradual change, but in a single night you pass from the height of summer to the depth of winter: from November to March the snow lies frozen and trodden into a hard, solid mass: all wheels disappear from the streets, and the silent sledges, unheard save through their jingle of bells (which the police rigidly require

them to carry), come stealing round the corners and along the streets at a very rapid pace. Occasionally sentinels are found frozen at their posts, though the guard is relieved at very short intervals, and all are well provided with warm clothing against the intense cold. The rapid river Tsar is arrested in its course, and soon becomes a dense mass of ice; and for four months winter reigns triumphant, without an interval of a thaw or the remotest prospect of a thaw for a single hour.

Such is the climate and such the situation of the Bavarian capital; but, notwithstanding the cold, the air is clear and the sun shines cheerily; and when it was announced that the king would shoot hares at a certain spot about two leagues distant from the town, it required no second summons to persuade four Englishmen to drive to the spot, eager to be spectators of the scene. When we reached the ground the royal sportsmen had not yet arrived, but a large number of keepers stood ready, and pointed out to us the most astounding preparations for sport I ever beheld. For two days previous to the hunt a large number of peasants had been employed to beat up the country for several miles round: this they effected by making a cordon, encircling the game and walking up towards the centre; and thus they gradually drove the hares in immense numbers into a very small space, viz., a little cover of perhaps four acres in extent: the hares so driven up had been enclosed by a wall of canvas from nine to ten feet in height, and when the keepers took us inside the enclosure, prior to the arrival of the king, there were the wretched victims lying huddled together like a dense flock of sheep, to the number of sixteen hundred, as we afterwards ascertained on counting the slain. Presently the royal sledges arrived with the king (now the ex-king) Ludwig, the Crown Prince (the present King of Bavaria), Prince Luitpold, Prince Max, and two other royal princes, for none but royal princes may shoot in these right royal battues: immediately they entered the canvas wall, and took up their positions at the farther end of the enclosure, each within a certain little nook of boughs, waist high, which had been previously prepared, of fir branches; whether as a protection against the rage of wounded hares, or as a pretence at ambush, I know not: and now the sportsmen are all standing behind their respective defences, in a line, about twenty yards apart from one another, and with their faces towards the canvas wall, which might be thirty yards in their front, each armed with a double-barrelled gun, and each with a whole posse of keepers behind him, with other guns to load and hand over. The word is given that all is ready; and now

the keepers and others, with whom we marched, forming a close line, began to walk up from the other end of the enclosure, driving all the unfortunate hares in a body towards the guns; as they neared the shooters they naturally ran to the sides; and now they were hunted round the open space, and made to run the gauntlet in front of all the guns: then the murder began in earnest, and for the first ten minutes each royal forefinger was continually engaged in pulling trigger after trigger, for as fast as each sportsman shot off his gun another was handed in its place. The hares at first came round in perfect droves, and then it was not only impossible to miss, but also impossible to kill without wounding many others; so then a horrible sight ensued, of hares unnumbered shuffling about with broken legs, wounded in every possible way, half-dead, bleeding, and uttering their mournful cry, so like the cry of a child. Soon the ground in front of the shooters was white with dead hares; still the slaughter went on, at first amidst a roar of guns, then a dropping fire, then single guns at longer intervals, then occasional shots, then it ceased, but not till every one of the hares enclosed had been driven round and round till it had met its death: happy were those first slain, for, once enclosed within the canvas, escape was impossible: if the poor animal had run the gauntlet before all the shooters once or twice, and had escaped unharmed or with a broken leg, the third or fourth round must destroy it: nothing living could escape. 'An unlucky squirrel, appalled at the noise, descended a tree close to the king, who, with a shout of delight, ruthlessly shot it as it gazed at him in amazement from the ground at about ten yards' distance, proving that if" a cat may look at a king" the old adage does not hold good with a squirrel, for this poor unsuspecting innocent paid for its temerity with its life. About twenty roe, bucks and does, had been accidentally enclosed with the hares, and these, too, must of course suffer the same fate, and were shot in like manner, save and except five or six bucks, which, terrified at the first noise of the shooting, and not yet having been shot at, ran back towards the advancing line of keepers, who immediately raised their hands and sticks to turn them; but, led by one noble fellow, the bucks took a spring right over our heads, hats and uplifted sticks, not a little to the delight of the Crown Prince, who, priding himself on his English habits and ideas, and knowledge of the English tongue, told us, he "would give any sum for a hunter who shall jump so," though, as the Germans never hunt or leap, and indeed there are no fences in Bavaria, we did'nt see of what possible use to his Royal Highness such a fencer would have been. Some of