168 Recent Literature. 



sandmchensis and fasciata in place of savanna and melodia, respectively, 

 for the Savanna and Song Sparrows. He also seems to have permanently 

 adopted the generic name Asio for Otus, hut to have abandoned Nisus for 

 Accipiter. 



In respect to the designation of incipient species, Mr. Ridgway uni- 

 formly adopts the system advocated by him in his paper on the use of 

 trinomials in zoological nomenclature in the present number of the Bulletin 

 (antea, pp. 129-134), and practically introduced by him two years since 

 in his Report on the " Ornithology of the Fortieth Parallel," and in his ac- 

 count of Mrs. Maxwell's Colorado collection (Field and Forest, Vol. II, p. 

 194 el seq.). Mr. Ridgway, in his discussion of a third term in zoological 

 nomenclature, raises no dead issue, although the necessities of the case 

 have already practically forced a decision of the question, so far as this 

 country is concerned. The " American school " of ornithology, and, we 

 may add, nearly all American writers on vertebrate zoology, and some on 

 Invertebrates, is a unit on the matter of the general principle involved, 

 though varying slightly as to details of expression. The necessity of 

 a distinction between forms trenchantly defined and those which are con- 

 spicuously unlike in their extreme phases of development, but which 

 obviously intergrade, as insisted on by Mr. Ridgway, faithfully reflects, we 

 believe, the feeling and the experience of American ornithologists. The 

 writer of the present review in 1871 opposed* the recognition by binomial 

 nanus of forms known to intergrade, on the ground that therein- the facts 

 of the case would fail of proper recognition, since no distinction would 

 thus be made between intergrading forms and trenchantly separated con- 

 generic species, and that a recognition of the laws of geographical varia- 

 tion and a statement of the phases wide-ranging species are prone to 

 manifest at particular localities, and under certain climatic conditions of 

 environment, would sufficiently meet all requirements. This pisition, 

 however, he very soon abandoned, and in the following year formally 

 recognized, by a third term, a considerable number of intergrading 

 forms among North American birds as geographical races, as was 

 almost simultaneously done by Dr. Cones and Mr. IJidgway.f To 

 Dr. Cones, however, is due the credit of suggesting, if not indeed of actu- 

 ally advocating, the adoption of a trinomial system of nomenclature as 

 necessary to a proper recognition of geographical races or incipient -pe- 

 cies. In referring, as early as August, 1871, to what seemed to him must 

 be the evil results that would follow from recognizing as species only Mich 



* bull. Mus. Com].. Zool., Vol. II, pp. -_M-J- •_'.-.(>. April, 1871. 



t Sec Coues, Revision of the Species of Myiarchus, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Phil., 1872, pp. 56-81, .Inly, 1^7-J; AUeu, Ornith. Recon., Bull. Mus. Comp. 

 Zool., Ill, No. •:. July, 1872 ; Coues, Key N. Am. Birds, October, 1872; Ridg- 

 way, Relation between Color ami Geographical Distribution in Birds, etc., 

 Am. Jour. Sci., IV, pp. 45 I I';", December, 1872. 



