vil 
John James Laforest Audubon. The name Laforest I never sign 
except when writing to my wife, and she is the only being, since my 
father’s death, who calls me by it.” But all his wife’s letters ad- 
dressed him as Laforest. 
The dropping of names may lead to confusion. Readers as a rule 
are not aware that the full name of George Baur is George Hermann 
Carl Ludwig Baur, or that articles signed by C. Hellmayr and E. 
Hellmayr are written by the same author, Carl Eduard Hellmayr. 
Neither do they remember that Allan Brooks and A. C. Brooks are 
both Allan Cyril Brooks, nor that A. M. Frazar and M.A. Frazar are 
one and the same person, unless reference can be had to some source 
where the names are given in full. Some authors drop certain 
initials, which they apparently regard as superfluous. Ordinarily 
this matters little but it is frequently interesting and sometimes im- 
portant to ascertain an author’s full name for purposes of identifica- 
tion. Mistakes in initials are frequent and names which are really 
different may through a slight error in the initials appear identical. 
Among the persons mentioned in “The Auk” are a number who 
have the same surnames with slightly different initials. Thus under 
brown sane i. and i H.; under Clark, A. H. €C:H., J. H., 
and J. N.; under Shufeldt, P. W., R. W., and R. W. 3rd, and under 
Watson, J. B., and J. R. The entries under Fisher represent 8 
different persons whose initials are A. K., W. K., E. W., G. C.,G. J., 
W. T. and two with W. H. A very slight error in any of these 
cases might be misleading but it is impossible to distinguish between 
William Harmanus Fisher and William Hubbell Fisher, merely by 
initials. In another case two writers on the birds of Vermont have 
identical initials, although their full names Carlton Dexter Howe 
and Clifton Durand Howe are quite different. 
Special care is necessary to avoid confusion in the names Adams, 
Swainson, and Corning. Charles Francis Adams and Charles 
Francis Adams, Jr., were not father and son, nor were William 
Swainson, the ornithologist, and William Swainson his biographer. 
In each case the former is dead and the latter now living. The name 
Erastus Corning was borne by five generations in the same family 
and the A. O. U. member who died in 1893, the third in the list, 
was distinguished by “ Jr.” as his father was still living at that time. 
All such cases require dates for purposes of identification. 
Reference should also be made to the rather rare cases in which 
an individual has taken up his residence in a foreign country and 
