PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. iil 
In estimating the probable consequences for the long run, it is necessary to 
discriminate between any given ornithological fact and the handle we may agree 
to give that fact. The former is a natural fixity, the latter is a movable furni- 
ture; the former is subject to no authority we can set up, the latter is wholly ar- 
bitrary, determinable at our pleasure. Uniformity of nomenclature is so obvious 
and decided a practical convenience that even at the risk of seeming to laud 
work in which he had a hand, the author cannot too strongly urge compliance 
with the Union’s code, and adherence to the set of names the Union has 
adopted. These may not be the best possible, but they are the best we have. 
The author’s insistence upon this point does not of course extend to any 
case where an error of ornithological fact may appear. That is an entirely 
different matter. Reserving to himself, as he certainly does, the right of indi- 
vidual judgment in every question of ornithological science, he is the last to 
persuade others to refrain from equal freedom of expert opinion.. “So many 
men, so many minds,” even when the number is only five; no individual opinion 
is necessarily reflected upon any point in the Code and Check-list ; it is the collec- 
tive voice of a majority of the Committee that is heard in every instance. The 
occasion for individual dissent on the part of any member of that body, as of any 
other writer upon the subject, arises when in his private capacity as an author 
he has, as it were, to pass upon and approve or disapprove any results of the 
labors of others. The Appendix to the present edition of the “ Key” unavoidably 
brings up such an occasion. Yet that he may not even seem to reflect upon any 
of his co-workers, his criticism express or implied has been sedulously reduced 
to its lowest terms. It consists chiefly in declining to admit to the “Key” some 
forms that the Committee have deemed worthy of recognition by name. Indeed 
he has preferred to err, if at all, on the other side, desiring to give the user of this 
book the later results of the whole Committee. 
Nevertheless he must here record an earnest protest, futile though it may 
be, against the fatal facility with which the system of trinomials lends itself to 
sad consequences in the hands of immature or inexperienced specialists. No 
allusion is here intended to anything that has been done, but he must reiterate 
what was said before (Key, p. xxvii) respecting what may be done hereafter if 
more judicious conservatism than we have enjoyed of late be not brought to bear 
down hard upon trifling incompetents. The “trinomial tool” is too sharp to 
be made a toy; and even if we do not cut our own fingers with it, we are likely 
to cut the throat of the whole system of naming we have reared with such 
