396 THE ZOOLOGIST 



Dr. Coues here enumerates all the birds hitherto found on the 

 entire continent of North America, north of Mexico, and includ- 

 ing Greenland. The original edition comprised 778 species, as 

 against 888 in the present. This number is made up by the 

 subtraction of six names, which are mere synonyms, and of 

 four which do not actually occur within the prescribed limits, 

 together with the addition of 120, most of the latter being newly- 

 described species, discovered in Texas, Arizona, and Alaska 

 since the publication of the ' Key.' Some of these Dr. Coues is 

 inclined to regard as scarcely worthy of the rank of full species, 

 but he includes them on account of their being generally received 

 as such. The advance of Ornithology in North America is 

 pretty clearly indicated by a table which Dr. Coues gives on p. 9, 

 from which we see that the total of the birds of that country, 

 given by Wilson in 1814, was only 283. 



Perhaps there is nothing in this work of Dr. Coues which 

 will grate so harshly on our Old World notions as his continued 

 use of a trinomial nomenclature. We who strive, even if not 

 always successfully, to follow the Stricklandian Code, and who 

 believe that a binomial nomenclature is at once the simplest and 

 the most useful, cannot but feel that any other system is both 

 retrograde and misleading. For instance, to take the first 

 example in the ' Check List,' if Turd/us migratorim propinqims, 

 is not Turdm migratorius, why not let it stand as Twrdm 

 propinquust If it is only a variety of Turdm migratorim, why 

 let it stand as a species, on the Bame footing as the type from 

 which apparently it so slightly differs ? Nomenclature is at best 

 arbitrary ; many a Thrush might be aptly described as fuscescens, 

 " somewhat dark," but when we speak of Twrdus fuscescens, and 

 know the species to which that name was first applied, it is 

 a matter of no real moment whether the name is apt or not. A 

 Scotchman's name may be Black, but we do not consequently 

 think of him as other than fair. Directly we cease to use names 

 as nothing but tokens, in the strict sense, we introduce con- 

 fusion. Trinomialism is simply an attempt to return to the old 

 method that Linnaeus is celebrated for having — as we hoped — 

 caused his followers to discard naming a bird by a diagnostic 

 sentence. If we use three names, there is nothing to prevent us 

 from using a dozen, save, fortnunatelv, the obvious confusion that 

 would result. It is only to be hoped that the evil example of the 



