PRELIMINARY NOTICES. 



ledge of natural history shall generally prevail, names 

 which designate the genus and the species, or groups and 

 families, in the most explicit manner; will, in all probahi- 

 lity, become more common; and thus supersede the abun- 

 dance of synonyms, for the same animal or plant, in the 

 various languages of the intelligent and civilized world. 



In the nomenclature of chemistry care was, however, 

 taken to denominate substances from the ingredients of 

 which they are composed, or from some of their sensible 

 qualities, a few only, such as water, being excepted from 

 the rule. Unfortunately the same care has not been taken 

 in natural history : for, too often, the name of the discoverer 

 of a bird is applied to it as a specific term, instead of having 

 given to it that which shall inform us concerning its pecu- 

 liar shape, colour, or other qualities. This misapplied 

 nomenclature has been noticed in page 399: and, as it 

 appears to be gaining ground in ornithology, it cannot on 

 this account be too strongly deprecated. Even the specific 

 name of p/«C(9, much less of /^er^on, is not, in natural history, 

 sufficiently discriminative, and should be avoided. 



Some of the critics complain, also, of the harshness and 

 unmusical nature of the new terms, forgetting that it is, 

 most probably, their own ignorance, as has been before 

 hinted, certainly not the unmusical nature of the terms, of 

 which complaint should be made. It would be very kind of 

 those gentlemen to inform us, what there is in the following- 

 words less musical than in thousands of our common words 

 in constant use in our poetry ; nay, it may be contended, 

 with some truth, that several of them are greatly superior 

 i« their musical intonation to such as house -sparrow, hedge- 

 sparrow, yellowhammer, woodpecker, &c. ; surely these are 

 less musical than alaudina, oriolina, merulid, sylviad, luscinia, 

 corvidy trochitid, fringillid, insessor, raptor, rasor, mnalidf 



