276 Stone, Generic N'ames of North American Oxvls. '?^"j^ 



324) he must, I think, have reached the same conchision that I 

 have here presented. 



A revision such as I have offered will inevitably be severely criti- 

 cised by those who do not believe in any change in our nomen- 

 clature, but who do not offer any explanation as to how we are to 

 arrive at a fixed system of names, without such change. When 

 they ask, "Are we any nearer to stability than we were ten years 

 ago ? " I would answer, yes ! There are obviously only a certain 

 number of publications in which descriptions of genera and spe- 

 cies occur, and with the invaluable works of reference that Mr. 

 Sherburn is placing in our hands we shall soon be past the possi- 

 bility of the resurrection of old names. 



The reason that we have to make so many changes at the pres- 

 ent time is simply because this phase of the subject has only 

 recently attracted the attention of more than a very few workers. 

 Why such wholesale criticism should be aimed at the revision of 

 nomenclature I fail to see, when revision in classification, in any 

 branch of natural science, is accepted as a matter of course. The 

 changes in one field, since the time of Linnaeus, are just as radi- 

 cal as in the other. When the anatomy and embryology of each 

 member of a group is known, the classification will reach a defi- 

 nite basis ; and when all the published names are found and inter- 

 preted the nomenclature will likewise be finally adjusted. 



However, I fear that explanations will not be of much avail, 

 except in the case of those who have been brought face to face 

 with questions of this sort and have been compelled to make a deci- 

 sion ; and I must confess that with these changes and others 

 which have been elsewhere proposed in the case of certain of the 

 earless owls, some of the pages of our Check-List will present a 

 decidedly unfamiliar appearance. Indeed, there is danger that 

 their contemplation may result, on the part of some of us, in 

 actions which, according to Thomas Pennant, are characteristic of 

 the owls themselves, for he tells us in his quaint ' Genera of 

 Birds' (1781) that they are accustomed to wink in the day time, 

 prey [pray?] in the evening, and snore loudly at night! 



