LETTERS 



To the Editors of British Birds. 



THE GENERIC NAMES OF OUR SWALLOWS. 



Sirs, — It has been my rule and practice, and one to which, whenever 

 possible, I still intend to adhere, not to enter into nomenclatural 

 controversies. On the present occasion, however, I have had to give 

 an opinion on Dr. Hartert's recent innovations in the generic names 

 of our Swallows and Martins, and as the matter has already been brought 

 to the notice of your readers (Vol. IV., p. 136) I feel that arguments 

 against the change should be brought forward. To my mind the chief 

 object of a name is in order that naturalists throughout the world 

 should know without any doubt to which species they are referring 

 in the course of their wTitings, and hence it is most undesirable to change 

 a universally accepted name except for very sound reasons. Such 

 reasons do sometimes arise, and then, much as we may regret it, a 

 well-known name has to be altered to one with which we are less familiar- 

 To settle, or, I should say, to attempt to settle, the differences of opinion 

 on this svibject an International Committee, that meets at the Inter- 

 national Zoological Congresses, was appointed, and this committee has 

 drawn up a set of rules to which all zoologists, though they may hold 

 their own opinions on various points, should conform, since by these 

 means alone can we hope for any uniformity. Unfortunately, the 

 committee itself committed a rather serious mistake by first agreeing 

 to take the twelfth edition of Linnseus's Syst. Nat., published in 1766, 

 as the basis, and subsequently altering that decision and going back to the 

 tenth edition of that work, published in 1758. The main arguments on 

 this point I do not know, but the twelfth edition was the one used by the 

 majority of ornithological writers in the nineteenth century, and that 

 edition has given us many of the names with which we are most familiar. 

 The committee, by altering their decision, therefore, not only emphasized 

 the point that there was dissension in their camp, but have spread that 

 dissension far and wide, and created, for the present at any rate, a 

 considerable amount of confusion. Be that as it may, however, the 

 tenth edition has now to be the basis, and we must adopt it, however 

 little we may like it. Dr. Hartert has been much criticized, in this 

 country at all events, for his innovations, many of which (but by no 

 means all) are merely due to his following the strict letter of the rules, 

 and to these we must submit. The Swallow question, however, comes 

 in another category altogether. In order to save confusion the com- 

 mittee decided that no name should be allowed to stand unless a suffi- 

 cient description of the characters or bird to which that name applied 

 was given at the same time. Rule VII., par. I., Proc. Int. Zool. Congr. 

 Berlin, p. 967, 1905, reads as follows : — 



