191^-] Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 337 



should never have been countenanced by the British Orni- 

 thologists' Union, still less adopted as it has been. It is 

 incontestable that it has caused the greatest confusion by 

 the alteration of names which have been current in our 

 literature for upwards of a century, and have become as 

 familiar as " household words." It results, moreover, in a 

 manifest injustice to Linnaeus himself, who is thereby made 

 responsible not only for typographical errors, but also for 

 names in the tenth edition of his great work which he 

 corrected in the twelfth, the last published in his lifetime. 

 To give but one instance of such injustice. In his tenth 

 edition Linnteus named the Golden Oriole Coracias oriolus, 

 but subsequently in the twelfth edition, having discovered 

 his mistake in regard to the genus to which he assigned it, 

 he altered the generic name to Oriulus, and bestowed the 

 specific name galbula, and as Orioliis galbula this name has 

 stood in all the textbooks from that time to the present day. 

 Why then alter it to Oriolus oriolus in face of the statement 

 by the Committee of the B. O. U. that "Linnaeus almost 

 invariably avoided using the same name in the generic and 

 specific sense." The word " almost " I think might be 

 deleted, for 1 can recall but one instance in which he in- 

 voluntarily did so. That was in the case of a fish (the 

 mackerel), which, by a printer's error, was at first named 

 Scomber scomber; but as I pointed out twenty odd years 

 ago (Zoologist, 189i, p. 471), Linnaeus corrected this in his 

 own handwriting to Scomber scombrus (a substantive in 

 apposition), thus removing all ground for establishing a 

 precedent. Yet, nowadays the new school of faddists, not 

 content with rtpeuting the generic name for what they call 

 tlie type-species, must needs repeat it a third time to indicate 

 a " subspecies," and so we are expected to adopt such ridi- 

 culous combinations as Oriolus oriolus oriolus and Pica pica 

 pica (as one might call to a dog), or worse still Coccoihraustes 

 coccothraustes coccotlirunstes, well-nigh unpronounceable. 

 All this verbiage should be swept away, and a return made 

 to the simplicity of the binomial system of Linnaeus, in 

 accordance with the views of the practical naturalists who 



