PRELIMINARY NOTICES. 



forgetting that it is, most probably, their own ignorance, and 

 not theterms,which is in fault. Besides, although the author 

 has, it is true, anglicised many of those neio terms, the merit 

 of their introduction mnst not be ascribed to him. He found 

 them, if not in current use, proposed at least by learned and 

 respectable ornithologists, and it became his duty to notice 

 them. The only new term which the author of Ornithologia 

 has introduced is dtrinel for the yellow-hammer ; his rea- 

 son for doing this is assigned in page 226: even this term 

 can hardly be called newy being anglicised from citrinella. 



The author laments, as much as any one can possibly do, 

 that numerous terms, and to those unacquainted with the 

 science, ?ie?« they must be, present themselves to us in books 

 treating of ornithology : he laments also the almost infinite 

 variety of names, both scientific as well as trivial, which 

 are applied to birds by different naturalists: he complains, 

 likewise, of the heedlessness and, in some instances, wan- 

 tonness, with which terms have been introduced ; thus 

 rendering the study of ornithology at once perplexing 

 and repulsive. But, how much soever he may lament all 

 this, it was his duty, nevertheless, as an historian of the 

 science, to exhibit it as it is, despairing as he does of ever 

 seeing it, at least in its nomenclature, what he could wish 

 it to be. 



The author is old enough to remember the first intro- 

 duction of the present Chemical Nomenclature, and those 

 who remember it as he does, can tell how it was opposed 

 and derided ; yet it has steadily made its way : he who 

 should now, for a moment, contend that Glauber's salts was 

 a better term than sulphate of soda, for the same substance, 

 would assuredly be dignified with a fool's cap. Although it 

 i^ not certain that, fifty years hence, syhia luscinia will b< 

 preferred to the nightingale, yet, as a more correct know- 



