i884-] Allen on Zoological Noinc7iclatnre. 34^ 



Drongos from different islands or groups of islands were repre- 

 sentative insular forms. The use here of trinomial designations 

 he believed conveyed an exact impression of the value of these 

 forms, which are so closely allied as to be almost indistinguish- 

 able. A more difficult case is that of the Yellow Wagtails, in 

 treating which Drs. Finsch and Hartlaub, and also Baron von 

 Heuglin have employed, as he believed prematurely, trinomial 

 nomenclature. Mr. Sharpe considered that the intermediate 

 forms which undoubtedly exist are due to another and totally dif- 

 ferent cause, viz., to hybridization, although the case is not 

 proved. 



Mr. Sharpe, in continuing, said : "There is one advantage which 

 we must all admit that the American zoologists possess over 

 ourselves, and that is, that they have a clear idea of the natural 

 geogi'aphical divisions of their continent, and their zoology has 

 been studied from many distinct points of view, such as the 

 presence or absence of rainfall, etc., and it only requires a glance 

 at Mr. Hume's essay on the distribution of Indian birds with re- 

 spect to the distribution of i-ainfall throughout the Indian penin- 

 sula to see how very important is this aspect of the subject. Even 

 in the British Islands there are variations in the size and colora- 

 tion of some of our resident birds, as any one may learn from Mr. 

 F. Bond, who has devoted sixty years of his life to the study of 

 British ornithology, and who now has one of the most interesting 

 collections in this country But when we come to study the 

 birds of Europe and the Pal^earctic region generally, how small 

 is our real knowledge, and what vast areas are there concerning 

 the ornithology of which we know next to nothing ! Great 

 praise is, therefore, due to men like Dr. Menzbier, who has just 

 written the first part of an elaborate treatise on the geographical 

 distribution of birds in Russia ; but it will be a long time before 

 we can have in any museum such a series of birds as is possessed 

 by the Smithsonian Institution for any one wishing to study the 

 geographical distribution of the birds of North America." He 

 added that the British Museum was fully alive to the importance 

 of the question, but he found that nothing was more difficult than 

 to procure from his colleagues in other countries of Europe repre- 

 sentative sets of the common resident birds of their respective 

 countries. 



In regard to the Goshawks, the Scops Owls, and the Crows, 

 he was not yet certain whether treating them as subspecies, as 



