626 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 201. 



Secretarj^ Island, Thompson Sound. Then 

 followed an interval of twenty-seven years 

 without any reliable record of Notornis, and 

 it seemed not improbable that the species 

 had at last become extinct, when a third 

 was captured by a rabbit hunter, or rather 

 by his dog, on the eastern side of Lake Te 

 Anau. This specimen was offered in the 

 United States for §600, and was finally sold 

 at Stevens's famous auction rooms, London, 

 for £110. 



The exact locality where the fourth and 

 last bird was found is not given, but it is 

 pretty certain that the species ranges over 

 a considerable extent of wild country and, 

 although probably what may be termed a 

 ' decadent ' species, will persist for a while 

 longer. 



It is to be hoped that the last specimen 

 has fallen into the hands of some one who 

 will preserve both skin and skeleton, for 

 there is no reason why so large a bird 

 should not be both mounted and skeleton- 

 ized. The habit of ' keeping the skin and 

 throwing away the characters ' of a bird is, 

 however, only too prevalent, and when this 

 is done by professional collecters we can not 

 expect much from others. And this leads 

 to the remark that, when the party dis- 

 patched to the Galapagos Islands by Hon. 

 Walter Rothschild obtained four specimens 

 of the fl.ightless and all but extinct cormo- 

 rant they simply took the skins and failed 

 to preserve a single bone. Considering 

 that the problems of the place of origin and 

 lines of dispersion of the cormorants hinge 

 upon anatomical evidence, such neglect is 

 little less than culpable. 



ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



In The Auk for October, Mr. D. G. El- 

 liott attacks and Dr. J. A. Allen defends, 

 successfully it seems to us. Canon XL of the 

 Code of the American Ornithologists' Union. 

 This canon states that ' ' the permanence 

 of a name is of far more importance than 



its signification or structure.* * * It there- 

 fore follows that hybrid names [anagrams, 

 ' nonsense ' names and ' barbarous ' or ' ex- 

 otic ' names] cannot be displaced. * * * '' 

 Why any working zoologist, including un- 

 der this term paleontologists, should wish 

 to abolish this canon it is difficult to under- 

 stand, for its removal, or lack of adoption, 

 would open, or does open, the way to count- 

 less changes of nomenclature and the crea- 

 tion of hundreds, if not thousands, of new 

 names. And all for no good reason ; zo- 

 ological names are not literature, but simply 

 handles by which species may be grasped, 

 and they serve their purpose equally well 

 if rough hewn or grammatically polished. 

 Le Conte used Gyascutus as a generic name 

 simply to illustrate the point that a name 

 need not of necessity have any meaning, 

 and Dr. Leidy coined names with the ex- 

 press statement that they were not etymo- 

 logically correct, but used because they were 

 shorter than if correctly formed. While it 

 is well when proposing a new name to have 

 it properly formed, there is no reason why 

 long-existing names should be overthrown 

 simply because of some fault in their con- 

 struction. Possibly most of the readers of 

 Science are familiar with Professor Walter 

 Miller's paper on ' Scientific Names of Latin 

 and Greek Construction, ' published in the 

 Proceedings of the California Academy of 

 Sciences, but the paper deserves to have a 

 wide circulation. F. A. L. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 ANTIQUITIES OF COSTA RICA. 



The last report (March, 1898) of Seiior 

 Juan F. Ferraz, Director of the National 

 Museum of Costa Rica, presents in succinct 

 form the condition of the institution, its 

 aims, its regulations and its needs. It is 

 earnestly to be hoped that to the latter there 

 will be a liberal response, as the Museum 

 has done excellent work and is a credit to 

 the State of Costa Rica. 



