8 A ROUGH TENTATIVE LISM@OF THE BIRDS OF INDIA. 
been modified by a consensus of naturalists as weighty as that 
which gave it currency. 
Clearly, if each man is to overrule the Code in whichsoever 
particular he deems this justifiable, all advantages of a Code 
disappear, and we fall at once into the position of our continen- 
tal brethren, each of whom, for the most part, does whatever 
seemeth good in his own eyes in these matters. 
Strickland and his co-adjutors have lived and written in vain, 
if such a change can be deemed other than deplorable, and the 
only way to avoid this disastrous and retrograde movement is 
for all of us to sink private views, and first adhere strictly to the 
Code, so far as it goes ; and, secondly, combine to accept a supple- 
mentary set of rules dealing with the more important questions 
on which the Code is silent, and, should it be possible to secure 
agreement in these points, modifying it in one or two respects 
in which it’s precepts are opposed to it’s principles.* 
Altogether 1,788 species are enumerated, of which, as at pre- 
sent informed, I should reject 106; the names of these latter I 
have printed in italics. Of the remaining 1,682, I have doubts 
of 74; and to these I have prefixed a note of interrogation, 
My larger list contains at present 1,917 species. 
There are many entire groups, such as the Drymecine, the 
Muscicapina, etc., which I have never yet had time to look 
into properly, the number of species in which i have no doubt 
that I shall be able to reduce when I go into them. For the 
present I have accepted every one’s species ali round, though 
many of them seem to me to require confirmation. 
Altogether the time has not come for publishing any such 
list. In the first place an innumerable number of detailed 
investigations must be carried out before any one could publish 
a really correct list of this nature ; in the second place, I 
have not the time to make this list even as correct as existing 
available materials would allow. 
Still, as my readers will have it, and begin to retort on me, 
my favorite saying, bis dat, qui cito dat, here it is, and I can 
only repeat that my sole consolation in sending out such an 
imperfect work is, the hope that with all its shortcomings, and 
however little it may redound to my credit, it will yet prove 
of some little use to my fellow labourers here, and aid in some 
humble degree the progress of ornithology in India. 
ALLAN Hume. 
* e.g. where in violation of its fundamental law of priority, it rejects good 
genera of Moehring, and good binomial appellations of Brimnnich. 
