1 92 1.] Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 345 



be welcomed by any ornitliologist. It must be remembered 

 that a multitude of races have been named of late years, 

 yet the number of species inhabiting,, say, a continent like 

 Africa is known now to be considerably less than was 

 supposed ten years ago. Tlie last phase, as Mr. Loomis 

 says, now approaches, for tbe whole of the geographical 

 variations of many species are now known, and the question 

 arises " of what scientific value are these variations ? " 



Well, it seems to us personally that trinomialism supplies 

 a handy (not invariably handy) adjective Avhich is inter- 

 nationally understood, and which designates birds from a 

 certain locality in a short and concise way. By the recog- 

 nition of subspecies we can also map out migration-routes 

 of birds from any given locality, and can note the effect of 

 environment on any given species throughout its range. 

 But beyond this we venture to suggest that the value of 

 subspecies is small, and that their taxonomic value is, 

 in many cases, nil. 



On the other hand, to those who accept m toto the 

 Darwinian theory — or what is commonly accepted as 

 the Darwinian theory — and all that it implies, all sub- 

 species will appear of great value as "incipient species." 

 Now, for our part it has always been a matter of the 

 greatest difficulty to imagino how a geographical form, 

 which, in fact, is already a s[)e(;ies, can be termed an 

 "incipient" one: for surely if any given specific group 

 has, we will say, c^ forms or variations, those x forms 

 have all equal specific entity, differing slightly or super- 

 ficially by the increment or decrement of some small 

 characteristics. Indeed, if we believe with ultra-Darwinians 

 in the " little by little '"' theory of evolution, there is no 

 obvious reason why the " typical form '' of any specific 

 group should not be just as much an incipient species as its 

 most distant geographical race. 



Speaking for ourselves, however, we no longer believe in 

 the "little by little" theory of evolution, nor incidentally 

 in " Natural Selection," except in its purely selective, as 

 opposed to creative, sense — and even in this sense we feel 



SER. XI. VOL.111. 2 a 



