262 BRITISH BIRDS. 



The Commis?ion was appointed in 1895, in 1898 it was made a 

 parmanent body, and increased to fifteen members, but a code of nomen- 

 clature adopted by the International Congress, as the result of the 

 labours of the Commission, was first jjublished in the Proceedings of 

 the Berlin Congress, 1901. At the same time a rule was adopted 

 that no amendment to the Code should be presented to any Congress 

 for vote unless the said amendment had been in the hands of the 

 Commission at least one year prior to the meeting of the Congress 

 to which it was proposed to present the amendment, and the Commission 

 decided to report to the Congresses only those propositions upon which 

 the vote in Committee was unanimous. These details may seem 

 uninteresting, but I have gone into them at such length in order to 

 sliow that the International Code is based upon no fanciful or arbitrary 

 opinion, but is the result of many years of labour, much correspondence, 

 numerous meetings and deUberations by a Committee chosen and 

 augmented by International Congresses of the zoologists of the world, 

 and adopted by those Congresses. 



It has become most desirable rigidly to follow these rules, and every 

 ornithologist who wishes to consider scientific nomenclatiu-e should 

 give up his individual tastes and follow these rules implicitly. In order 

 to do this one must make oneself acquainted with these rules. Mr. 

 Bonhote has not done this. He says that the Committee " unfortunately 

 committed a rather serious mistake by first agreeing to take the twelfth 

 edition of Linnteus's Systema Naturce, published in 1766, as the basis, 

 and subsequently altering that decision and going back to the tenth 

 edition, published in 1758." This is by no means the case. Probably 

 Mr. Bonhote is thinking of the " Stricklandian Code," first promulgated 

 by the British Association in 1842, and in the main, followed by 

 British ornithologists of the nineteenth century. This " code " did 

 much to bring zoological nomenclatiu-e to some degree of stability, 

 and was admirably conceived, nevertheless it had its faults, and one of 

 these was that it had fixed the date of the starting-point of nomenclature 

 at 1766, instead of 1758, when binomial nomenclature began. That 

 this code cannot in all its paragraphs be followed any longer has been 

 admitted by all Congresses and all scientific bodies who have seriously 

 studied and decided upon questions of nomenclature. No excuse exists 

 therefore for a small number of British ornithologists to adhere to it 

 any longer. Never has there been any question at the International 

 Congresses or in any of the Commission's published works about the 

 year when nomenclature began to be valid. 



After this mistake, Mr. Bonhote states that I have been " much 

 criticized " for my " innovations," though admitting that they are due 

 to my following the strict letter of tho rules to which " we must submit.'" 

 I cannot quite agree to this statement. I know that many of my friends 

 do not like my " innovations," and that some even go so far as not to 

 adopt thena, even when they know that they are absolutely correct, 

 but I have seen very little criticism, unless disagreement with one's 

 views and a disregard of one's labours be called criticism. 



