INTRODUCTION. ix 



different members of the Committee, but tlie whole has been 

 revised by the entire body, who consider themselves jointly 

 responsible, although many disputed points have been decided 

 by the votes of the majority. 



CLASSIFICATION. 



After some consideration it was decided by the Committee 

 to adopt the classification used by Dr. Sharpe in his 'Hand- 

 list of Birds,' but the sequence of the Families and Orders 

 has been reversed, so that those forms which are generally 

 considered the most highly organized and specialized come 

 first. 



NOMENCLATURE. 



It has been the object of the Committee to use the oldest 

 name for each genus and species, commencing from 1758, 

 the date of the 10th edition of Linnaeus' ' Systema Naturae/ 

 Until a few years ago it was the practice of British 

 zoologists to date the commencement of binomial nomen- 

 clature from 1766, when Linnaeus published his 12th, last, 

 and most complete edition. The use of the 10th has un- 

 fortunately necessitated the changing of many old and 

 familiar names. 



The first aim of our system of nomenclature should un- 

 doubtedly be uniformity and fixity, and most zoologists are 

 now agreed that this can only be attained by keeping to the 

 strict law of priority. Much as the Committee regret having 

 to make these changes, they feel that when the names here 

 adopted have established themselves, as they hope will soon 

 be the case, a great step forward towards international uni- 

 formity will have been obtained, as both American and 

 German zoologists have now universally adopted the 10th 

 edition of Linnaeus. 



