iv PREFACE, 
gical systematist, from the time of Linnzeus, should really receive 
the credit due to him for whatever improvement he may have pro- 
posed in the System. 
The basis of the impartial nomenclature which I wish to adopt 
and establish among Naturalists, is the same that was employed by 
the late Mr. Vigors in drawing up his list of genera, and one which 
Mr. Swainson terms the “inflexible law of priority.” “It has the 
merit,” says Mr. Strickland, “ of being the only one which is just, as 
it preserves and honours the terms employed by original discoverers 
in preference to those introduced by later critics; and it also has 
the advantage of reminding us of the date at which any species was 
discovered or group defined.” This law may, however, cause the 
use—as Mr. Strickland also remarks—of words which are certainly 
barbarous in their formation and devoid of euphony ; but the adop- 
tion of the first word given must occasion the employment of a much 
more correct nomenclature than one with the words selected for 
their “superior euphony of sound or applicability of meaning.” If 
systems were established on this latter rule, they must inevitably 
“vary with the tastes and caprices of men.” 
But my object is not to criticise the words which by this law of 
priority ought to be employed, but strictly to exemplify the mode in 
which the species of birds have been from time to time divided into 
genera by different writers since the first edition of the ‘ Systema 
Nature” in 1735; and at the same time to indicate as far as possible 
those genera which are synonymous with others that had been pre- 
viously proposed, and thus to give to Ornithologists a correct 
systematic list of the numerous names employed. This has been 
a work of patient and laborious research, undertaken in the hope 
that it might be the means of the “ establishment of a uniform and 
permanent language,” to quote again the words of Mr. Strickland, 
‘among Naturalists of all nations.” 
I have endeavoured to make the following list as complete as 
possible ; I must however be allowed to state that I have met with 
similar difficulties to those which attended the late Mr. Vigors “in 
determining the priority of the modern generic names among the 
continental Ornithologists,” owing to the want of the means of ex- 
amining various periodical journals and works which are rarely pro- 
