NOTES ON NOMENCLATURE II. 279 



The fact is English ornithologists are slowly falling away 

 from both the actual precepts and the principles of the Code. 

 The German Faust is leading the poor English Margaret from 

 the paths of virtue, and English writers, who profess to stand 

 by the British Code, are becoming participants in those very 

 offences which Strickland so emphatically denounced. 



" There is another source for this evil, which is far less 

 excusable — the practice of gratifying individual vanity by 

 attempting, on the most frivolous pretexts, to cancel the terms 

 established by original discoverers, and to substitute a new and 

 unauthorized nomenclature in their place. One author lays 

 down, as a rule, that no specific names should be derived from 

 geographical sources, and unhesitatingly proceeds to insert 

 names of his own in all such cases ; another declares war 

 against names of exotic origin, foreign to the Greek and Latin, 

 &c, &c.-" 



Why all I said about my friend Dr. Finsch's massacre of 

 the innocents, was mere milk and water to this fiery, uncom- 

 promising condemnation of the systematic pillage of the species 

 and genera of our predecessors that the continental system per- 

 mits, aye and approves and insists on. But there were English 

 ornithologists found to defend the practice ; thei'e are English 

 ornithologists who use these unlawfully begotten names, one or 

 two even who actually themselves descend to these impious 

 practices. 



The pretext of a name being hybrid has of late, on several 

 occasions, been put forth even by English writers as grounds for 

 throwing aside a well-established prior title, and substituting 

 some truly classically compounded name. 



Poor Strickland ! could he have conceived that such things 

 would be done on the pretended authority of his Code ? 



" Can he smile on such deeds as his followers have done V 

 he, who never entertained even the faintest notion of settiuo- 

 aside a name on account of its hybridity, but only mildly 

 remarked : 



" Naturalists should be specially guarded not to introduce any 

 more such terms into Zoology which furnishes too many ex- 

 amples of them already?" 



But I will say no more on this subject now. For years I have 

 been vainly endeavouring to obtain a copy of this Code, which 

 a certain Zoological Hierarchy at home, are perpetually flingin fl- 

 at our heads, as authorizing this and forbidding that. At last, 

 owing to the kindness of our ornithological Aristides, Professor 

 Newton, I have obtained a copy, which I shall print in extenso 

 in an early number, and I find that our Hierarchy has as 

 notably obfuscated the plain and simple precepts of this Code as 



