PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 77 



intergradation, a Europeau oruitliologist will usually express himself 

 thus : " I have before me a specimen which in every respect is interme- 

 diate between the two alleged species, thus proving them to be only 

 different stages [or varieties] of the same specific type." The Ameri- 

 can, on the other hand, will say : " I have before me a specimen, No. — 



of the collection, an adult male, shot on the of , and. 



collected bj' Mr. at , which, by presenting such and such 



characters, is intermediate," etc. In the first case jou have to take the 

 man's word that there is such an intermediate link; in the second you 

 can trace the statement back to its source, you can control and criti- 

 cise, or, in other words, in the European school you have to deal with 

 the person, in the " Bairdian " with the fact, the specimen ; the differ- 

 ence between the two and the scientific soundness of the latter process 

 is too plain to require further comment. 



It has been said by one of the prominent promotors of trinominalism 

 in this country that the great danger of the system is the opportunity 

 for immature specialists to name as subspecies forms too slightly 

 differentiated to require any such ibrmal recognition, and that conse- 

 quently our lists of synonyms would be overburdened. 



To me it seems as if this prediction is not warranted by past ex- 

 perience. In Europe the system has existed, although not on a 

 very extensive scale, for forty years or more ; still, if we examine the 

 synonymies of European birds, we will see that with the exception of 

 the trinomiuals of C. L. Brehm, who was not an immature specialist, 

 and whose trinomiuals do not belong here — very few trinominals mix 

 with the formidable lists of synonymous binominals. The American 

 synoujmical lists show the same thing, because the rather numerous- 

 trinomiual synonyms are mostly put down to show the different " com- 

 binations" of the three names. We will have the same result if we go 

 over the number of subspecies described in America during the ten years 

 between 1871 and 1881. Consulting Eidgway's "List of untenable 

 species and races of North American birds described since 1858," in his 

 " Nomenclator," p. 80, we find that 11 trinominals are untenable, while 

 of species described during the same period 9 binominals do not hold 

 good. It is safe to say, however, that if trinominals had not come into 

 use several of the forms described as trinominals would have entered 

 our lists of synonyms as pure binominals. It is further i)lain that the 

 percentage of the untenable trinominals is vastly smaller than that of 

 the binominals, as during those ten years an overwhelming majority of 

 the new forms described consisted of trinominals. The untenable tri- 

 nominals (according to the list quoted) rest on the following authori- 

 ties : Baird; Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway; Cooper; Coues; Ridgway; 

 of these Cooper is guilty of only one. 



The danger, it will be seen, is not very formidable. Nor do I think 

 that a swelling of the synonymies is of any real harm to science; it 

 causes some inconvenience to those who have to compile or copy those 



