308 Bibliography. 
certain name, was therefore its discoverer, or even its first systematic 
deseriber. He affirms that Linnzeus would have expressly rejected 
“ Tyrannus crinitus, Linn. (sp.),” were the innovation proposed in his 
contemporary for making him seem to adopt it. The hardship is still 
greater when the question is not of the division of an old genus, but of 
mands the highest powers of the naturalist, will be less esteemed than 
portance that we should be able to thread our way back through en- 
tangled synonymy and mistaken references, to the original sources. 
Here our difficulties would be greatly multiplied, unless two sorts 
Synonyms are used. For who, as Mr. Agassiz says, can find out what 
Linneus has said of Muscieapa crinita, without a direct reference to 
the genus in which Linnaeus himself placed it? And when, as often 
happens, the Linnzean species is mistaken, so that the Tyrannus crini- 
tus, Linn. (sp.) according to Swainson, is not the T. crinitus, Linn. (sp-) 
1av 
selves discarded it. Therefore I entreat and pray them, by all the in- 
terests of the science they wish to promote, to abandon their proposi- 
tion, and not to introduce a new schism into natural history, but to re- 
turn again to the system of Linnzeus, the most simple of all, and least 
liable to errors and Babylonish confusion in nomenclature.’ 
The Committee of the American Association more wisely ado ted 
hi 
with that of the genus, Prof. Agassiz thinks is of no consequence, unless 
