I52 The Irish Naturalist. August. 



A NEW LIST OF BRITISH BIRDS. 



A Hand-List of British Birds. By E. Hartert, F. C. R. Jourdain, N. F. 

 TicEHURST, and H. F. Witherby. London ; Witherby & Co., 

 1912. Price 7s. 6d., net. 



As might have been expected, trinomials are the rule rather than the 

 exception in the " Hand-I.ist of British Birds " which appears under 

 the joint authorship of Messrs. E. Hartert, F. C. R. Jourdain, N. F. 

 Ticehurst, and H. F. Witherby. The authors define it as the second 

 object of their undertaking, but we think it might more appropriately 

 have been styled the first, " to give each bird its correct scientific name 

 in uniformity with the rules of the International Commission on Zoological 

 Nomenclature." It was really desirable that this should be done, since 

 a rigid application of the rules adopted by the Fifth International Zoolo- 

 gical Congress involves an almost wholesale departure from the specific 

 names with which British ornithologists have long been familiar, and 

 the importance of possessing such a list as sets the results of the new 

 code clearly before us will be recognised by all. Even those amongst us 

 who may kick most strongly against orders to transfer the long accepted 

 and beautifully appropiate name of Turdus musiciis, from the Song- 

 Thrush to the Redwing — because Linnaeus, in the muddled description 

 of Turdus musicus that he wrote in 1758, used some expressions better 

 adapted to the bird that he afterwards called T. iliacus than to the Song- 

 Thrush — will welcome the publication of a Hand -List that saves them 

 from the risk of being misled by minutely scrupulous authors who follow 

 the rules of priority into all its least welcome consequences. 



In their preface, the authors speak with some severity of those who 

 hesitate to accept at once every consequence of the authorised International 

 code. We note with some interest, however, that even Mr. Jourdain, 

 who in his capacity as part-author of the Hand-List, is responsible for 

 the statement that Turdus musicus is " unassailable " as the true name 

 of the Redwing, is also in his capacity as part-author of the " British 

 Bird -Book " now in course of publication, implicated in the crime of 

 rebellion against this view, inasmuch as the British Song-Thrush is there 

 described under the name of Turdus musicus clarkei, and we are told in 

 an Editorial footnote (p. 319) that " to discard T. musicus now would only 

 cause confusion, and so defeat the main aim of nomenclature and classi- 

 fication." 



The use of trinomials has become so copious as to suggest that the 

 turn of quadrinomials cannot be long delayed. For instance, our Hooded 

 Crow,' being represented by other slightly different forms in some of the 

 Mediterranean countries, appears in the Hand -List as a subspecies of 

 Corvus comix, C. comix comix ; while the Carrion Crow, for similar reasons, 

 is set down as a subspecies of Corvus corone, C. corone corone. Now, as 

 many naturalists doubt whether the Hooded and Carrion Crows are 

 specifically distinct from one another, it follows that those who " lump " 

 them as one species, and who therefore stand in need of trinomials to 

 distinguish them as subspecies, will require a four -named system to 



