CORRESPONDENCE. 



"Trinomial Nomenclature of Plants." 



(This volume, p. 6.) 



As is so often the case with people who are anti-anything, your anti- 

 trinomialist does not appear to have learnt what the system he attacks really is, 

 but to have confused the shadow with the substance. Trinomialism is not, as he 

 and other opponents seem to think, simply the putting of three names in a row, but 

 is the system under which races, especially geographical races, thought to be of less 

 than specific rank (not aberrations, individual variations, and such like), receive 

 distinctive Latin names in addition to their specific ones. Whether " subsp." is or 

 is not inserted between the second and third terms of the series is exactly of the 

 same importance — i.e., nil — as whether we write "Homo sapiens " or " Gen. Homo sp. 

 sapiens" on the binomial system. The latter way of writing the name is just as 

 much trinomialism as the former, and " H. sapiens subsp. mongolicus " is as much 

 trinomialism as " H. s. mongolicus." 



That when left out, the word understood should be " subspecies " goes without 

 saying, and the vagaries of individuals who think of, and then leave out, any other 

 word, or don't think at all, no more condemn trinomialism itself than those of wild 

 and careless " species " makers do the binomialism under which we all work. 



O. T. 



The Rosy Feather- Star. 

 Strictly speaking, it was, no doubt, inaccurate to use the phrase " floating 

 colonies " with reference to this animal. That phrase was used to bring out the 

 facts of its gregarious habit and its power of flotation or movement from place to 

 place. These facts are presumably unquestioned by "Paddy from Cork," so that 

 the creature still seems an adequate disproof of Mr. Drummond's dictum, to wit, 

 " The mere fact that animals cling to one another, live together, move about 

 together, proves that they communicate." Jesting " Paddy " may now answer his 

 own question, if he think it worth while ; but, an he will stay, he may learn of 

 another mode of occurrence in addition to the three that he has noted himself, and 

 apparently imagines to exhaust the possibilities. Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, a dredger of 

 some experience, wrote in the Geological and Natural History Repertory for 1866 

 (p. 306), " I have myself seen a number of Antedon Celticus clinging to the rope several 

 feet from the dredge when it was taken up from about 60 fathoms ... no part 

 of the rope lay on the ground." Is it not probable that these numerous Feather- 

 stars were floating at a few feet from the bottom, and that they grasped hold of the 

 rope as it came in contact with them ? 



F. A. Bather. 



The Bird's Foot. — A Correction. 



In Natural Science for September, 1894 (vol. v., p. 208), I had the misfortune 

 to state that the deep plantarsof the Trochilidas were schizopelmous, as in Passeres. 

 This is incorrect, for there is a short branch connecting the flexor longus hallucis with 

 that branch of the flexor perforans digitoritm which runs to the second digit. No one 

 regrets this blunder more than myself; it probably arose from my severing the 

 minute, anastomosing branch, in clearing away the connective tissue where the deep 

 plantars cross. 

 Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Frederic A. Lucas. 



January 15, 1895. 



