212 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



rather than to the Continental forms, and that therefore any 

 attempt to trace in them a Scandinavian origin will have to 

 deal with a period many thousands of years back into the 

 past, and not with a nineteenth-century immigration. That 

 these two species are in any proper sense migratory, — as 

 between one part of the British Isles and another, or from 

 the Continent to Great Britain, — I cannot believe. The very 

 fact that so many geographical races exist, and the absence 

 of any trace of migration at Heligoland and the lighthouses 

 on the British coasts, seems well nigh conclusive on the point. 

 One tit no more makes a migration than a swallow a 

 summer. Our Tits are essentially non- migratory birds : 

 they wander continually, no doubt, through the woods in 

 search of food ; but these peregrinations are confined within 

 very narrow limits. Wherever I have met with the Marsh 

 Tit in autumn or winter, — it is most easily detected then, — 

 I have invariably been able to find it again in spring and 

 summer, when carefully looked for. 



With regard to the vexed question, namely the best form 

 of nomenclature to use for the designation of geographical 

 races, I do not presume to speak with the authority of an 

 expert. I cannot refrain, however, from confessing to a 

 certain amount of repugnance to the raising of them all to 

 specific rank. In the interests of science, it is of course 

 highly desirable that these races should be recognised and 

 named ; but it seems to me the objects in view would be 

 better attained by giving them merely sub-specific rank and 

 adopting a trinomial system of nomenclature, than by raising 

 them to full specific rank under a purely binomial system. 

 To my mind, the old-fashioned plan, or some modification of 

 it, of adding var. (variety) so and so to the binomial appella- 

 tion of the species, regarded in the broad sense, is as good, 

 and would meet with as general acceptance as any yet 

 devised. By its adoption, the less learned among us would 

 be saved much bewilderment, and at times more serious 

 troubles ; while full scope would still be given for the genius 

 of those who desire, or find it necessary to employ further 

 subdivision. The more elastic the system, the greater will 

 be its utility. For it must be remembered that Ornithology, 

 with its many aspects, appeals to an unusually large con- 



