314 
list (1886) is well shown by comparing the lists that preceded it, 
that is, the lists of North American birds published by Baird in 
1859, Coues in 1874, Ridgway in 1881 and Coues in 1882. By 
taking the first fifty genera given in the American Ornithologists’ 
Union check-list it is found that in only five cases has the generic 
name remained the same from 1859 to 1886. That is, 45 of the 
50 generic names (90 per cent.) have been unstable. Since the 
American Ornithologists’ Union list xot one of these fifty names 
has changed. The accompanying tabular statement will show 
more clearly than words the changes in these fifty genera. This 
complete list embraces 322 genera and about one thousand spe- 
cies and sub-species. In the ten years that have elapsed since its 
publication it has been found necessary to change only three gen- 
era, one sub-genus, three species and one sub-species by action of 
the law of priority. (See opposite table.) 
This truly astonishing result must certainly be highly gratify- 
ing to the ornithologists, and the question arises whether botan- 
ists can bring about any such result in their department. A feel- 
ing in favor of such a movement has been growing stronger and 
stronger for a number of years, and has at last taken shape in the 
appointment of a committee of the Botanical Club of the Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Science at Rochester, in 
1892, who proposed a set of rules of botanical nomenclature with 
which all are now familiar. The Club also authorized the. publi- 
cation, as an earnest of what the enforcement of these rules might 
be expected to accomplish, of a list of the plants of northeastern 
North America. This list is also too familiar to require com- 
ment. Of it Professor Bessey has said: «‘ This book is the sign 
that the day of ‘ authority ’ as such, is ended, and the day of law’ 
has begun.* All that it seems necessary to say is that there seems 
to be a misapprehension on the part of some botanists as to the 
method by which this list was prepared, it being imagined by a 
few persons that the particular individuals who had most to do 
with it were in some way personally responsible for the result. It 
should be known to all that they were merely the instruments in 
the hands of a large committee, and that every question was sub- 
mitted to all the members of that committee, even when not in 
—$——$—— 
* American Naturalist, 29: 350. 1895. 
