5H) Recent! II pvbJishcd Ornithohf/ical U'orks. 



not less than 389 species and subspecies are recognised as 

 coming within the limits of " North and Middle America," 

 though, we must say, we think that Mr. Ridgway need not 

 have overburdened his list by including the Galapagos 

 within the area treated of, the Galapagan Avifauna being, in 

 our opinion, quite as nearly related to South as to North 

 and Middle America. 



Again, though it cannot be denied that subspecies exist 

 in Nature, and that in some respects the use of them is of 

 advantage, we cannot approve of the enormous increase of 

 trinomials that has lately taken place among the new school 

 of systematists. Seven species of Carpodacus mexicanus, 

 for example, are allowed by Mr. Ridgway, and twelve of 

 Cardinalis cardinalis. We fully admit the great experience 

 that ]\Ir. Ridgway has gained from the enormous series of 

 specimens before him, but we cannot believe that it would 

 be possible to recognise many of these supposed subspecies 

 without a knowledge of the locality of the specimens. Wc 

 quite agree with our author when he confesses that 

 trinomials are a " necessary evil," and that binomials arc 

 preferable. We shrink from contemplating what the 

 number of " subspecies " will come to be when the birds of 

 other countries shall have been worked up to the same pitch 

 as those of North and Middle America, and we lament the 

 task that will fall on the ornithologists of the future in 

 striving to recollect their names. 



In matters of nomenclature Mr. Ridgway adheres closely 

 to the Code of the A.O.U., of which he is such a distinguished 

 member. One of the most objeclionable of these rules is 

 that the original mispelling of a name cannot be corrected. 

 Thus Swainson having, from ignorance or from error, called 

 a genus of Pigeons LepiotHa instead of Leptoptila, the first 

 spelling must, according to this practice, be always retained — 

 obviously wrong as it is. As we have said before, the rules 

 of grammar and common sense are, to our mind, of far 

 greater importance than the artificial rules of priority, as 

 they are carried out by the new school. So far from 

 conducing to uniformity of nomenclature, such proceedings 



