SCIENTIFIC NAMES AND CLASSIFICATION 



season it may not do so at all the seasons, 

 so that more than one subspecies may be 

 found in the same locality. 



SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION 



In the scientific classification of birds, the 

 attempt is made to arrange them according to 

 their natural relationships. The small groups 

 or genera (designated by the first word of the 

 scientific name) are grouped into families or 

 groups composed of related genera. The 

 thrush family, Turdidcz, the tanager family, 

 Tangaridce, and the heron family, Ardeidce, 

 are examples. Though these families com- 

 prise several or many genera and numerous 

 species, every member of one of these families 

 has the characters of a thrush, a tanager or 

 a heron, as the case may be. Families in 

 turn are grouped into orders, while all the 

 orders, that is all birds collectively, consti- 

 tute the class Aves, which is one of the classes 

 of vertebrate animals. 



For more detailed and exact classification 

 groups of intermediate grade may be used, 

 such as suborders, intermediate in rank be- 

 tween orders and families, and subfamilies, 

 intermediate between families and genera, 

 etc. 



Family names (and no others) always end 

 in the termination idee; subfamily names, 

 always in the termination ince. There are 

 no rules prescribing uniformity in the termi- 

 nations of names of the other grades. 



In this book some brief statements regard- 

 ing the characteristics, distribution, etc., of 



17 



