PREFACE. Vll 



writers may be employed ad lib. to gain a little temporary 

 notoriety, and end in making the study of birds impossible. 

 Can any science bear the weight of such a system of nomen 

 clature as would burden it with names like Caryocatacles 

 car) ocatactes brachyrhyncha ! I ? 



Then as regards the changing of specific names of birds. On 

 this subject a great deal of nonsense has been written, and 

 some of my critics who have declaimed on the subject of 

 nomenclature, have shown that they do not understand what 

 they are writing about, nor what synonymy means. My 

 position in the matter is very simple. I contend that when 

 Linnaeus, or any other of the Fathers, gave a name to a bird, 

 no power on earth should be allowed to change it, by taking 

 the specific name and making it the title of a genus. The 

 Linnean name, when perfectly capable of identification, as it 

 generally is, should be held sacred, even when the result is 

 the duplication of the specific name, as with the Linnet, the 

 Fringilla cannabina of Linnaeus, and the Goldfinch, the Frith 

 gilla carduelis of Linnaeus. In process of time both these 

 species have been separated (and rightly) from the genus 

 Fringilla, and the earliest generic names turn out to be 

 Cannabina of Boie, and Carduelis of Brisson. Hence the 

 names Carduelis carduelis (L.) and Cannabina cannabina (L.), 

 and I see no logical way to avoid these names. Nor is this 

 system of nomenclature without one great advantage, viz., 

 that in nearly every case the duplicated name descends upon 

 the typical species of the genus, which becomes at once re- 

 cognisable by such duplication of the generic and specific 

 names. 



Lastly, there is one other matter to which I would direct 

 the earnest attention of my brother ornithologists. It is a 

 question that can best be settled by a general conclave of 

 ornithologists, which should not be longer delayed ; and this 



