MEADOW LARK. 21 



habit, for it is seldom seen at more than a few yards above the 

 turf and is most generally upon it. Occusionally an enterprising 

 fellow, seeking an extended view, mounts to a tree top, but the 

 eastern meadow lark ia strictly a bird of the meadow and rarely 

 perches elsewhere than on a low rock or on a hummock in the 

 swell and dip of the field. Even when flushed from its hiding 

 place in the grass our bird does not rise high in the air, but skims 

 the surface with an a[)parently laborious eflfort, and quickly drops 

 again amid the green blades. 



American naturalists, following the system of nomenclature 

 and classification prepared by the committee of the American 

 Ornithologists' Union, use stuniella magna as the name for our 

 eastern bird and distinguish the western form by stnrnella magna 

 neylecta. The "American school" of ornithologists are believers in 

 a trinomial system of nomenclature and use the third name to sepa- 

 rate the forms they consider to be sub-species or " varieties," slight 

 variations from the original species, the bird that chanced to be first 

 described and named. They do not pretend to determine whether 

 true sturnella magna or the variety neglecta was the original stock, 

 but magna being named first retains precedence. 



What the naturalists intend to emphasize by these trinomials 

 may be stated thus : Species, they say, originated, were evolved, 

 through the influence of environment, — of climate, food, and sur- 

 roundings, — the difiering conditions in diflferent geographical areas 

 producing diflferentiations of form and color and habit. Sub-species 

 are the intermediate forms, or geographical varieties which have 

 not yet become suflBciently diflferentiated to warrant their being 

 ranked as species. 



Under this rule the rank of each bird or other animal, in any 

 system of classification, is largely a matter of judgment on the part 

 of the author of the system. Difierences of opinion occur among 

 naturalists as among other people, and so we find in the books 

 various systems, some of them representing the individual opinion 

 of the writer, while others have been approved by the majority of 

 an organized association. There are naturalists who consider that 

 it is a mistake to distinguish mere varieties by a distinctive name, 

 and these writers hold to the opinion that when a bird differs from 



