2Qii LooMis, Geographic Variation in Nomenclature. \^^\^ 



RECOGNITION OF GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION 

 IN NOMENCLATURE.! 



BY LEVERETT MILLS LOOMIS. 



It seems inborn in the human mind to desire to know the names 

 of objects, and if the objects are new, new names are invented. 

 When the South Atlantic States were settled back in 1600, the 

 English colonists named our Robin after its English namesake — 

 in their eyes, longing for the familiar things of England, the Robin 

 of the New World was the Robin of their old home. But in the 

 Mockingbird they found no European counterpart ; they could 

 give it no onamatopoetic name, for it had the notes of all birds, so 

 they called it the Mocking Bird. A quaint old writer, who has 

 hidden his identity under the initials ' T. A.,' and whose tract is one 

 of the rarest in the long list of Americana, in writing of the birds 

 of Carolina, says : " Birds the Country yields of differing kinds 

 and Colours .... For Pleasure, the .... blew bird, which wan- 

 tonly imitates the various Notes and sounds of such Birds and 

 Beasts which it hears, wherefore, by way of Allusion, it 's call'd 

 the Mocking Bird ; for which pleasing Property it 's there esteem'd 

 a Rarity." 



Later came Mark Catesby, the ornithologist, and proceeded to 

 give a new name, for the trick that ornithologists have of giving 

 new names to familiar birds, is an old trick, as old as the trade of 

 ornithology. This new name for the Mockingbird, which appeared 

 in Catesby's sumptuous folio, 'The Natural History of Carolina, 

 Florida, and the Bahama Islands,' was Tiirdiis jni/ior ciiiereo-albns 

 non fnaciilaiiis. 



I'lirdus minor ci/ierco-albus >uvi maciilatits, however, was not to 

 be lasting ; a master mind came into the world, an iconoclast. 

 This image-breaker was LinniEus, who had genius for system — 

 his 'Systema Naturae ' reduced ornithology to system. The Mock- 

 ingbird, still the sweet singer of the Southland, is given a new 



1 Read at the special session of the American Ornithologists' Union and 

 Tenth Anniversary of the Cooper Ornithological Club, San Francisco, May 15, 

 1903. 



