126 NOTES ON NOMENCLATURE, III. 



I do not see it; but still if ornithologists or naturalists gene- 

 rally approve this, let it be so. Only let us have a definite rule 

 to that effect, and do not let us profess to go by the Code, when 

 we do nothing of the kind. 



It seems to me that in the matter of our nomenclature we 

 are getting into much the same fix at which we have arrived in 

 regard to our religion. 



The Scripture, read to us weekly in church as our guide in 

 life, tells us to sell all we have and give to the poor. The ex- 

 perience of life teaches us that to do this would in ten gene- 

 rations reduce us to the level of savages, that the accumulation 

 of capital is essential to all physical and scientific progress, 

 &c, &c, and in practice we don't sell all we possess, (if we can 

 help it) even to give to the poor. 



If we impartially survey the existing aspect of religious 

 feeling, we shall find that no one thing has operated more 

 powerfully to confuse the minds of the majority and shake 

 their hold upon the vital truths that (though in widely different 

 degrees of development) underlie all forms of belief amongst 

 civilized men, than the startling divergencies that exist between 

 religious precept and religious practice as aimed at and approved 

 by the best and wisest. 



It is the old story — better no law, than laws that have be- 

 come dead letters. 



Now " non aliter, siparva licet componere magnis" do matters 

 stand with our ornithological nomenclature. We have a Code 

 clear and distinct enough on most points, and the priests of 

 our sanctuary are never slothful in preaching it to us, while 

 at the same time their practice is moulded on widely different 

 rules,, and it is this divergence more than anything else that 

 has plunged the ornithological nomenclature of even British 

 ornithologists into its existing state of confusion. 



We all profess to abide by the Code, but each makes his own 

 gloss on the rules, and amplifies or modifies as seems best to him 

 — reproves his neighbours for a disregard of Code rules, when 

 that disregard eventuates in a nomenclature different from his 

 own, but at the same time boldly transgresses the rules, whenever 

 such transgression chimes in with his own predilections. 



With their traditions our ornithologists make the Code of no 

 avail, and on no point is this more conspicuous than in the gene- 

 rally-received practice of going back to types, to prove that 

 incorrect descriptions that ought to be under the Code, rejected 

 and set aside for good and all, really referred to a given 

 species. 



There is nothing in the Code about this, and either the prac- 

 tice should be disallowed or the Code altered by a congress of 



