520 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVI. 



Dark colour and light colour, strong wings and weak ones, are, 

 of course, two of the simplest developments in evolution, and any 

 child can understand them, but the reasons for the many other 

 differences existing, often in but slight degree, between sub- 

 species are still beyond what we can now interpret ; on the other 

 hand, the material we of this generation are busy collecting and 

 collating will assuredly help those of a future generation to 

 decipher the puzzles which we now grapple with in vain. Each 

 generation has at its disposal the collective knowledge of previous 

 workers, and the Naturalist who desires to add something new to 

 the sum total of existing recorded facts must not onl}^ assimilate 

 the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors, but must con- 

 stantly seek fresh fields of learning. 



When ornithology was in its infancy, birds were lumped 

 together under one name in the most extraordinary way, and at 

 this period much the same degree of nomenclature obtained 

 amongst civilized people as obtains to-day among savage tribes. 

 Thus there were groups of birds known as Vultures, Eagles, 

 Ducks, Storks, Owls, Flycatchers, and so on ; sometimes these were 

 again divided into " large " or " small", and sometimes a second 

 qualifying name was added, denoting some conspicuous character. 

 As time progressed these larger divisions were gradually broken 

 into smaller and smaller ones, until eventually most birds which 

 differed conspicuouslj^ from others had a definite trivial name. To 

 this succeeded a time when Latin and Greek, or pseu.do-Latin and 

 Greek, names were given in addition to the local trivial names, 

 thus enabling workers to recognise the bird spoken or written 

 about, whatever the language emploj^ed in the context. At this 

 period and for a long time after, fresh discoveries were constantly 

 being made; unknown countries were still plentiful, and Natural- 

 ists had more than sufficient to emplo.y them in working out new 

 species on the very broadest lines. Under such circumstances 

 minor differences were either overlooked or ignored, whilst the 

 causes for these same differences were never sought for. 



Now, however, we live in a time when there are but few 

 countries left to explore, and novelties of specific rank are few and 

 far between, consequently minor differences attract attention to a 

 far greater degree than Avas previously the case. Together with 

 these differences the worker now seeks to elucidate their causes, 

 thus necessitating a knowledge of their life history quite unneces- 

 sary so long as one was content to acknowledge only such striking- 

 features as were visible without search to ever3'one. A very much 

 finer division of living objects becomes possible to the modern 

 ornithologist, for whom the material to be worked on has already 

 been collected and classified on broader lines bv the Naturalists 



