President's Address. 291 



posed. Another way has been long ago proposed and used 

 by some naturalists, and has lately been brought into con- 

 siderable prominence by ornithologists in America, especially 

 by Dr Coues, the eminent author of the " Key to the North 

 American Birds." This plan consists in omitting the term 

 " var./' tlie subspecific term being simply added, so as to 

 become an integral part of the name of the organism, which 

 accordingly becomes trinomial, or composed of three words. 



Dr Giinther, for instance, in his " Catalogue of Fishes," uses 

 the expression Salmo fario gaimardi to designate the variety 

 of the common trout characteristic of Scotland and the 

 northern parts of Europe, while that of England and the 

 central parts of Europe he calls Salmo fario ausonii 



Example of birds, from the beginning of Coues' new 

 " Check list " of North American birds ; 



Turdus migratorms, Linn. — The Eobin. 



„ „ propinqims, Eidgway — Rocky Moun- 



tain Robin. 

 „ „ confinis (Baird), Coues — St Lucas Robin. 



Of course there are two primary objections to this plan, 

 namely, that there must be a considerable amount of arbi- 

 trariness in selecting particular varieties or subspecific forms, 

 as requiring or worthy of a third authoritative name; and 

 secondly, that, having fixed upon these, the transitional 

 forms are left out of account. To meet the latter objection, 

 Mr Seebohm proposed a supplementary plan of his own, 

 amounting, in fact, to a quadrinomial system. That is to 

 say, in order to indicate and include the intermediate links 

 between two subspecific forms, he would append to the name 

 of the species two subspecific names joined by a hyphen. 



E.g., Cinchos aquaticus melanogaster (Scandinavia). 



„ „ melanogaster-SilhicoWis (W. and Central 



Europe). 

 „ „ albicollis (S. Spain, Algiers, Italy, 



Greece). 

 „ „ albicoUis-csishmiTiensis. 



„ leucogaster (E. Siberia). 



VOL. VIII. T 



