^°Hg^^'J Allen, A Defence of C(uio>/ XL oj the A. (>. U. Code. y)\ 



employed as generic or subgeneric terms for birds between this 

 date and 1766. A careful examination of the first 60 pages of 

 the work (about one fourth) shows that about one eighth of the 

 names there entered are merely variants or emendations of other 

 names, while very many other variants have here escaped record. 

 It also appears that some names have received as many as three 

 or four renderings at the hands of as many expert ' spellers '; that 

 in some cases the same author has spelled names of his own 

 coining in two and sometimes in three different ways ; in one 

 instance, at least, using the masculine, in another the feminine, 

 and in still another the neuter form of the word ; that German 

 and French writers have apparently certain national preferences 

 in respect to the transliteration of Greek into Latin; that some 

 prefer the full or expanded form in compounding names and 

 others an abridged form, for the sake of brevity, llius we have 

 Ant/ireptes, Anthor/ieptes, Anf/h>threJ>tus, and Anthothreptes ; Anod- 

 orhy/ic/ius ^Lvvd Anodimfor/iynchiis ; Bajyp/ionus d.nd Barryp/ionus ; 

 Bessoniis and Bessononiis; Bradornis and Bradyornis ; Calornis 

 and Caniornis ; Calurus and Calliurus ; Caliptorhynchus and 

 Caliptorrhynchus ; Calopsitta aiid Callipsittaais ; Cephahpis and 

 Cephallspis ; Cephus z.nd Cepphus ; Chroicocephalus^ C/ircecocep/ialus, 

 and Croocephalus, etc. But space cannot be given, nor is it nec- 

 essary, for the further illustration of this and other cases where 

 custom varies in respect to connective vowels, the doubling of 

 consonants, as / and r, or the interchange of ai, ce, and a:, of /, _>-, 

 and J, or of c and k, or the retention or the omission of the 

 Greek aspirate, etc. 



Aside from these simple classes of variants, affecting probably 

 at least an eighth of all the generic and specific names in zoology, 

 the ' purist,' like certain German and some other authors that could 

 be named, totally rejects not only hybrid names and names con- 

 sisting of arbitrary combinations of letters, but all names based 

 on indigenous appellations, as the native names of animals. To 

 show what changes this implies, it may be stated that in the 

 Psittaci alone the names of not less than 15 genera and sub- 

 genera out of a total of 72, were rejected not long since bv a 

 single author on the ground of faulty construction or barbarous 

 origin, in several cases new names being given in place of the 



