342 Mr. V. U. Lowe on Coloration as a Factor in 



will take the form of a plea for some method by which we 

 could combine genera, with the result that we should be 

 able to recognise larger natural or phylogenetically ailied 

 groups^ genetic phyla, super-genera, or whatever terra we 

 might like to apply to such groups. This, I think, could 

 for the most part only be done by a systematic study of the 

 colour-patterns characteristic of immature examples of whole 

 groups of birds. Witmer Stone, in America, has already 

 put in a plea to this effect. Briefly stated, my reasons for 

 this plea are as follows : — 



As things are now, in by far the larger number of cases, 

 genera are purely artificial, arbitrary, and non-natural* 

 groups which have been constructed for our convenience. 

 They have, in fact, been constructed in order to simplify and 

 codify our general concept of any jjarticular family of birds. 

 Unfortunately, unless we simultaneously employ some 

 method of integrating minor generic groups into larger 

 and naturally constructed super-generic phyla, there seems 

 to be a danger that, in the multiplication of genera which 

 is now going on, our concept will be — not simplified, but 

 complicated and obscured. For all practical purposes, we 

 shall, in fact, have arrived by a laborious and painstaking 

 process at the exact position from which we originally set 

 forth. We shall indeed have been perambulating a circle ; 

 for we have only got to imagine the process of genera- 

 splitting carried a few more steps further on and we shall 

 have arrived at such a pass that all genera will have become 

 monotypic. This may seem to be an exaggerated picture of 

 the position, but if colour-pattern is really and truthfully 

 ignored in generic classification — as systematists assure 

 us — a flood of monotypic and quite artificial genera is not 

 * In the discussion which followed the reading of this paper, much 

 was made of the idea that genera were non-natural, man-made and purely- 

 convenient groups. If however the units (species) of which genera are 

 composed are natural, nature-made units, surely groups comprised of 

 such units ought to be natural if only such units are properly assorted. 

 If genera are not natural (and there is no question that many of them 

 are not), that is the fault of those Avho created them— not Nature's. 

 Personally I believe in groups of species which are genetically allied, 

 that is to say I believe that Mr. Iredale struck the right note when he 

 said that genera were or ought to be us natural as species. 



