VI PREFACE. 



of Birds," twenty years ago. My conclusions have been followed 

 by naturalists in many countries, and, I hope, will continue to 

 be so. I would further remark that Dr. Stejneger's '' incon- 

 venient discoveries " have not had a "great attraction '" for me, 

 as my kindly critic suggests. I really hate all these changes of 

 names, and I have always had a great sympathy with the pro- 

 posal of Mr. Seebohm to adopt only the best-known name for 

 a species, but the "auctorum plurimorum" system of nomen- 

 clature, though very good in theory, would not work well in 

 practice, for a name in a majority one year, might turn out to 

 be in a minority two years hence, and so there would agaiji be 

 no stability in our nomenclature. 



It is certainly unfortunate that so many older names for 

 common species have been unearthed during recent years, 

 but that is surely not the fault of the authors themselves, 

 but of their descendants, who have not taken the trouble to 

 search the whole of the literature. I have used in the present 

 " Handbook " such names as I believe to be not only the right 

 ones, but those which in future are most likely to be adopted 

 by ornithologists generally; and I cannot agree with Dr. Sclater 

 that, because this little "Handbook" is "confessedly in- 

 tended for popular use, it would have been wiser to adhere 

 to ordinary nomenclature and to avoid an unnecessary multi- 

 plicity of genera." This is exactly what I think ought not to 

 be done for in a book which has such a wide sale as the 

 " Naturalist's Library," it is more important to teach the 

 reader the nomenclature most likely to be in vogue in the 

 future, than to serve up to him names which a very little study 

 on his part will enable him to discover to be out of date. 



Mr. Harting has also written a friendly notice of my first 

 volume in the "Zoologist" for 1894 (pp. 468-472), but he 

 also complains that there is so much that is " new " in the 

 book. It really looks as if he had allowed much recent work 



