2 28 Elliot, Some Genera and Species. Wvt 



imagine that any one would dream of offering diagnoses like those 

 given above for establishing genera, unless he was imbued with 

 a determination to carry out his purpose at all hazards. Wag- 

 ler's characters were far better, but they have been rejected by 

 ornithologists as unworthy of being considered generic for over 

 fifty years, and this fact may have induced Mr. Stejneger to 

 look for others. But his genera are not those as defined by 

 Wagler, the only similitude being that Stejneger has kept the 

 same species together. Wagler's characters were taken from 

 adult birds, where generic distinctions if they exist are permanent, 

 and remain as long as the bird lives, and not from that incipient 

 stage of adolescent plumage that a few fleeting hours causes to 

 disappear. As well found a genus ( and indeed with more 

 reason) for the young of the Spoonbill with its narrow pointed 

 bill, and another for the adult with its spatulate maxilla, for here 

 is a wide difference, but the first is only a temporary condition, 

 like the down on the cygnets, the latter a permanent character. 



I have said that Stejneger rejected Wagler's first named char- 

 acter, the ' knob,' for a reason, and this appears in the key of 

 the species of Cygnus (p. 189), where it is employed in a specific 

 sense as indicating the divisions in which he separates what he 

 gives as the distinct species of that genus, but it is nowhere 

 employed in his paper as a generic character, as Wagler gave it. 

 Thus, in the synopsis of the species, Stejneger divides them as 

 "a 1 , culmen with a knob at the base; a 2 , culmen without a 

 knob," this last, by the way, being Wagler's chief character for 

 Olor. 



As to the rounded or cuneate tails as lone characters, the 

 other being of no value, it is hardly necessary to discuss them as 

 of sufficient importance to establish a genus. It will thus be 

 seen that Wagler's genus Olor, founded upon characters that 

 were merely non-existent when compared with those he gave for 

 Cygnus, having been rejected by all ornithologists for more than 

 fifty years, can hardly with reason be resurrected for such insuf- 

 ficient and unreliable reasons as those advanced by Stejneger ; 

 and the fact remains, and many ornithologists have always been 

 convinced of it, that there does not exist any character that can 

 properly be termed generic, to separate the known species of 



