Nomenclature of Ornithology. 1 99 



groups such subdivisions are made as bear a strongly marked and 

 decisive natural character that indicates a deviation in each from 

 the typical character of every adjoining genus, and points out its 

 own peculiar and exclusive station in nature, I cannot conceive 

 that the subdivisions so characterized can be considered ought else 

 than genera. There are no terms more definite in their meaning 

 and application than those of genus and species. Every man, 

 whose education extends to the first principles of logical reasoning, 

 is aware of the individual import, and the relative connexion of 

 these words: and the application of them to the nomenclature of 

 Natural History has tended considerably to its simplicity and per- 

 spicuity. Every man has ascertained, in fact, that the first more 

 comprehensive group into which species are immediately united by 

 the prevalence of some leading character common to all, is a genus. 

 If then those sections or subgenera, to which I refer, actually do 

 possess such characteristick peculiarities as separate the species 

 contained in them from all other known groups, it follows, that 

 by whatever names we may choose to call them, they are, in the 

 common and philosophical acceptation of the word, strictly and 

 bona fide genera. To call them by any other appellation, in or- 

 der to retain that exact form of words to which we had been ac- 

 customed, seems but an awkward compromise with our pride, 

 which will cling to a word itself, while it surrenders its significa- 

 tion. It appears, in short, like an obstinate adherence to an 

 errour, which we are aware we cannot retain with justice, and 

 which yet we know uot how to relinquish with grace. 



Neither does it offer any substantial argument against the sepa- 

 rate existence of such generick groups that they are united toge- 

 ther at their extremes. I have already dwelt sufficiently on this 

 point, and shall only repeat my conviction that, in every instance 

 where new groups are formed, or old ones subdivided, this union 

 is universally admitted between conterminous groups, but that it 

 does not alter the typical character, or invalidate the separate ex- 

 istence, of any. A group that intervenes between two distinct 

 genera, and partakes of the separate characters of each, so far as to 

 be referable with strictness to neither, assumes itself a decided 

 character. To say that it stands intermediately between two 

 contiguous genera, so as to possess characters in common with 



