1 91 8.] Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 745 



New men, new nomenclature ; not that of Alexander 

 Wilson, Audubon, and Coues, (perhaps, after all, they were 

 old fossils with just some rudimentary acquaintance with 

 ornithology) ; and so ten-thousand names are to go because, 

 it would appear, names are dependent on population. Since 

 Mr. Jourdain assures us that an English-speaking nation 

 a hundred million strong have adopted the name of platy- 

 rhyncha, which is known and understood from the Atlantic 

 to the Pacific, it may be as well when we cross the " Herring 

 Pond " to use that term for our old friend the Mallard. 



My conversation with Sam, the head-waiter at the Plan- 

 ter's Hotel, is a confirmation of Mr. Jourdain's statement, 

 that the alteration in the name of our familiar wild duck 

 has taken deep root amongst the masses of the hundred 

 million English-speaking people, " from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific." 



Yours faithfully, 



Burwash, Sussex. H. W. Feilden. 



20 August, 1918. 



Ibis " Separates.'' 



Dear Sir, — Would it not be possible in the interests 

 of working ornithologists to extend slightly the principle of 

 "separates" of articles which appear in ' Tlie Ibis'? At 

 present these '' separates " are only printed off in the in- 

 terests of the writer of any article, who receives 25 copies 

 of his article to present to his friends. It would be a 

 great boon if such " separates " were available on purchase 

 to members of the Union. There are many members like 

 myself who work in foreign lands and therefore have to 

 economise library space, yet it is just the worker in out of 

 the way spots who wants to refer to the available literature 

 regarding his station, and that literature is usually composed 

 solely by articles in 'The Ibis.' To carry several bound 

 volumes about just for the sake of two or three articles is 

 often out of the question, while ' The Ibis ' is too valuable 



