THE TORREY CLUB CATALOGUE. 191 
a genus; and all this, earried into effect, will simply puta 
period to our vaunted epoch of binomial nomenclature. To 
' make rules that shall hold alike in respect to generic, sub- 
generic, specific, subspecific and varietal names (leaving out 
additional probabilities of subvarieties and named “ forms ") 
will be legislating for nothing less than that polynomial 
system of nomenclature which our forefathers of a hundred 
and forty years since believed they had abandoned, for them- 
selves and for all ages. 
One would not like to say, dogmatically, that customs of 
the fathers shall not be returned to. One is not so sure that 
they will not be, in spite of us. History is prone to self- 
repetition ; why not natural-history ? Already some of our 
zoological neighbors, who as a body have always run on a 
little ahead of us botanists, are back, and up to eyes and ears, 
in the old polynomial system. Let any one who may think 
this a queer statement take the trouble of looking up a certain 
new list of names to be found on pages 591 to 594 of Ridg- 
way’s Manual of North American Birds. The binomial bird 
names in that, published only a year or so since, are not more 
numerous, on the average, than are binomial plant-names in 
a certain universal catalogue of plants which was published 
ir the year 1623, i. e, Bauhin's Pinax. In both these lists, 
with a space of two hundred and fifty years intervening 
between their dates, the bulk of the names are made up of 
three or four words, The present ornithological lat 
is essentially, formally, and almost literally, the old poly- 
nomial system returned to; an inevitable result of attempting 
to bind under the law of priority anything beyond the two 
terms, generic and specific, which constitute the binomial ; 
and it seems that as many of us as feel our vocation to lie in 
the direction of sustaining, settling and perpetuating a 
binomial nomenclature, must let the mere fate of each sub- 
generic and varietal name, and not our rule-making, take care 
of it; since to legislate for the preservation of them is to 
subvert our main purpose. EA 
In respect to what is called the naming of species by impli- 
