."306 Mr. W. R. Ogilvie-Grant : Notes in 



However careful one may be, errors creep in and are over- 

 looked. This, alfis, is inevitable. We are all glad to have 

 ■mistakes pointed out and to correct them, when such occur. 

 Mr. Mathews complains that I have frequently ignored his 

 " published notes dealing with facts," but the reason is 

 obvious. Our ideas o£ what constitutes ornithology unfor- 

 tunately differ very widely. My object has always been to 

 avoid any change of well-known names unless absolutely 

 necessary, and to avoid the needless multiplication of 

 genera and subspecies. Mr. Mathews, on tlie other hand, in 

 his ' Birds of Australia,' seems to consider it a solemn duty 

 to change as far as possible all names formerly recognised, 

 to use a different generic name for almost every species, and 

 to introduce endless new names for subspecies — very often 

 imaginary and generally almost uncharacterised. A very 

 large number of generic names, and, hundreds of specific 

 and subspecific names, have thus been added to the long 

 list of Australian birds (about 850) since Mr. Mathews first 

 commenced his ornithological studies about the year 1907. 

 He seems annoyed that older ornithologists in this country 

 are not disposed to accept his changes in nomenclature and 

 to approve his methods, which, far from advancing our know- 

 ledge of birds, have precisely the opposite effect. Such a 

 system of name-juggling and species-splitting as he adopts 

 can only result in hopeless chaos. This seems a very great 

 pity ; for had Mr. Mathews, with his resources and excep- 

 tional opportunities, continued his great work on the same 

 lines as he commenced it in his first volume, he would 

 have deserved all praise; but now he seems to have run 

 completely off the rails. 



Moreover, there is no finality about his work, for he and 

 Mr. Iredale are constantly changing the names which they 

 themselves have adopted. 



Take, for example, the case of the Rock-hopper Penguin, 

 occasionally found on the coasts of Tasmania, Catarrhactes 

 chrysocome (Forster) of my Catalogue of Birds B. M. xxvi. 

 p. 635 (1898). 



