Nomenclature of Ornithology. 185 



natural inference that we may draw from this calculation is, that 

 the nomenclature of the present day is considerably less compli- 

 cated than it was in the days of Linnaeus ; and that so far from the 

 admission of these genera tending to create confusion, we actually 

 require the addition of upwards of one hundred more to those 

 already in our possession, if we wish to place our nomenclature 

 on an equality, with respect to the proportion the number of 

 genera bear to that of species, with what Linnaeus thought it 

 necessary to establish. In fact, the violent outcry against new genera 

 seems to originate in our ignorance of the actual advance of the 

 science. Contented with the limits which it possessed in our 

 earlier acquaintance with it, we are unaware of the overwhelming 

 influx of new forms and new species, which render it a matter not 

 of choice, but necessity, to institute new departments to which 

 they may be assigned. In condemning therefore the introduction 

 of new names and genera into Ornithology, it is not against the 

 naturalist that we raise our voice, who is forced to invent new 

 names and stations by which he can embrace the incoming produc- 

 tions of nature. It is against nature herself that we exclaim, who, 

 however fixed and stagnant may be the state of our own know- 

 ledge, ceases not to pour forth a continued stream from her 

 exhaustless sources, as if in derision of our ignorance, and to 

 expose the impotence of those systems with which we would 

 pretend to circumscribe her. 



It is evident that were we to restrict the number of genera in 

 Ornithology to that which was instituted by Linnaeus, or even in- 

 crease it by the addition of those genera which his strict adherents 

 have latterly been necessitated to admit,* we should have, on an 

 average, about fifty or sixty species to a genus ; a proportion 

 which every man of science, and particularly those who are con- 

 versant with the sister departments of Natural History, will 

 acknowledge to be inadequate to the general purposes of nomen- 

 clature. But even this is the most favourable point of view in 

 which the opposite side of the question to that which I espouse 



* The number of genera admitted into the last edition of Dr. Latham's 

 " Synopsis," amounts to one hundred and eleven. 

 Vol. I. n 



