CLASSIFICATION. 5 



he is convicted of having sprung from parents unlike 

 himself, he is a mere parvenu, stigmatized as a "variety," 

 * ' aberration,' ' or ' ' sport. ' ' 



Of course, such varieties have often been fixed by breed- 

 ing from them in captivity, as we shall see later ; and the 

 work of bird-fanciers and stock-breeders in this direction 

 has been of an importance which has never yet received 

 its due meed of praise and encouragement, considering 

 that by studying it Darwin was able to demonstrate 

 the possibility of the production of one form from another, 

 And thus to raise the study of zoology from a mere 

 pastime to a philosophy of life. 



The name descriptive of the particular species is, it 

 will be seen, placed under that of the genus, although 

 the opposite obtains in English and Hindustani. This 

 is simply because in Latin the adjective always follows 

 the substantive, as in so many other languages ; and all 

 scientific nomenclature follows the rules of Latin Gram- 

 mar, although the words are more often than not 

 adopted from the Greek. Besides which, it is certainly 

 a great convenience to have the generic name first, just 

 as in indexing a number of people's names one reverses 

 the usual order and puts the surname before the 

 Christian name. 



If we carry our investigations into Parrots further, we 

 shall find a number of species, grouped again into genera- 

 tions which differ very much from the Indian long-tails 

 and Australian broad-tails. They have brush-tipped 

 tongues, run a great deal to red in colour, have a peculiar 

 smell, a sharp cry, and live on soft food, not on grain. 



