Vil. 
Analytical Key prepared by Professor Jones. It has not been thought best to give 
large place to these matters nor to intrude them upon the text, because of the 
many excellent manuals which already exist giving especial attention to this field. 
The nomenclature is chiefly that of the A. O. U. Check-List, Second Edition. 
revised to include the Fourteenth Supplement, to which reference is made by 
number. Departures have in a few instances been made, changes sanctioned by 
Ridgway or Coues, or justified by a consideration of local material. It is, of 
course, unfortunate that the publication of the Third Edition of the A. O. U. 
Check-List has been so long delayed, insomuch that it is not even yet available. 
On this account it has not been deemed worth while to provide in these volumes 
a separate check-list, based on the A. O. U. order, as had been intended. 
Care has been exercised in the selection of the English or vernacular names 
of the birds, to offer those which on the whole seem best fitted to survive locally. 
Unnecessary departures from eastern usage have been -avoided, and the 
changes made have been carefully considered. As matter of fact, the English 
nomenclature has of late been much more stable than the Latin. For instance. 
no one has any difficulty in tracing the \Western Winter Wren thru the literature 
of the past half century; but the bird referred to has, within the last decade, 
posed successively under the following scientific names: Troglodytes hiemalis 
pacificus, Anorthura h. p., Olbiorchilus h. p., and Nannus h. p., and these with 
the sanction of the A. O. U. Committee—certainly a striking example of how not 
to secure stability in nomenclature. With such an example before us we may 
perhaps be pardoned for having in instances failed to note the latest discovery of 
the name-hunter, but we have humbly tried to follow our agile leaders. 
In the preparation of plumage descriptions, the attempt to derive them from 
local collections was partially abandoned because of the meagerness of the ma- 
terials offered. If the work had been purely British Columbian, the excellent 
collection of the Provincial Museum at Victoria would have been nearly sufficient ; 
but there is crying need of a large, well-kept, central collection of skins and 
mounted birds here in Washington. A creditable showing is being made at 
Pullman under the energetic leadership of Professor W. T. Shaw, and the State 
College will always require a representative working collection. The University 
of Washington, however, is the natural repository for \West-side specimens, and 
perhaps for the official collection of the State, and it is to be devoutly hoped that 
its present ill-assorted and ill-housed accumulations may early give place to a 
worthy and complete display of Washington birds. Among private collections 
that of Mr. J. M. Edson, of Bellingham, is the most notable, representing, as it 
does, the patient occupation of extra hours for the past eighteen years. I am 
under obligation to Mr. Edson for a check-list of his collection (comprising 
entirely local species), as also for a list of the birds of the Museum of the Belling- 
ham Normal School. The small but well-selected assortment of bird-skins belong- 
ing to Messrs. C. W. and J. H. Bowles rests in the Ferry Museum in Tacoma. 
