338 Ohitnnry. [Ibis, 



library at Washington before starting on liis journey. It is 

 one thing to read books, especially on birds, and quite 

 another thing to remember all their contents, but I must 

 confess tliat on this and subsequent occasions on which 

 I had the pleasure of talking " birds ^' to Roosevelt the 

 power of his memory filled me with admiration. 



His views on modern nomenclature were somewhat sur- 

 prising and not always consistent. At first he seemed to 

 be inclined to favour the inclusion as subspecies of all local 

 forms. This is borne out l)y his acceptance and even 

 approval of the naming of* the collections of the Roosevelt 

 expedition, which included many new birds and mammals 

 as subs])ecies which even the most enthusiastic advocates of 

 local forms could scarcely accept. On the other hand, after 

 due consideration and some time had elapsed he became a 

 very orthodox '" lumper/' and laughed at the claims of the 

 "splitters.^' The case in point which caused his conversion 

 to the former group was, he told me, an occasion when he 

 submitted the skulls of three l)ull Bos cajfe^' which his party 

 had shot out of one herd at one place in East Africa to 

 Professor Alatschie of Berlin. Tlie learned zoologist in 

 question pronounced them as the skulls of three different 

 subspecies, giving each and all separate names. 



More recently Roosevelt himself expressed his views on 

 scientific nomenclature: — "The time has passed when we 

 can afford to accept as satisfactory a science of animal life 

 whose professors are cither mere roaming field collectors 

 or mere closet catalogue writers who examine and record 

 minute differences in 'specimens' precisely as pliilatelists 

 examine and record minute differences in postage stamps, 

 — and with about the same breadth of view and power of 

 insight into the essential. Little is to be gained by that 

 kind of ' intensive ' collecting and cataloguing which 

 ])ears fruit only in innumerable little pamphlets describing 

 with meticulous care unimportant new subspecies, or 

 new species hardly to be distinguished from those already 

 long known. Such pamphlets have almost no real interest 

 except for the infrequent rival specialists wdio read them 



