Vol. xl.] 82 
this succeeded a time when Latin and Greek, or pseudo- 
Latin and Greek, names were given in addition to the local 
trivial names, thus enabling workers to recognize the bird 
spoken or written about, whatever the language employed 
in the context. At this period, and for a long time after,” 
fresh discoveries were constantly being made; unknown 
countries were still plentiful, and naturalists had more than 
sufficient to employ them in working out new species on the 
very broadest lines. Under such circumstances, minor 
differences were either overlooked or ignored, whilst the 
eauses for these same differences were never sought for. 
Now, however, we live in a time when there are but few 
countries left to explore, and novelties of specific rank are 
few and far between, consequently minor differences atiract 
attention to a far greater degree than was previously the 
case. Together with these differences, the worker now seeks 
to elucidate their causes, thus necessitating a knowledge of 
their life-history, quite unnecessary so long as one was 
content to acknowledge only such striking features as were 
visible without search to everyone. A very much finer 
division of living objects becomes possible to the modern 
ornithologist, for whom the material to be worked on has 
already been collected and classified on broader lines by the 
naturalists of previous generations. 
This much for subspecies, but having decided that we are 
to recognise these, how are we to distinguish by words one 
subspecies or geographical race from another? We may 
decide to use binomials, only adding some description which 
shall denote what particular race each belongs to, or we may 
add a description of the geographical area to which it is 
confined—sometimes quite a lengthy matter,—or we may 
adopt the quickest and simplest plan and add a third name 
to the binomial, and so come to the now universally adopted 
system of trinomialism, 7. e., three names which, without 
further description, show to what genus and species each 
geographical race belongs. 
But before a subspecies can be determined, two things 
are essential: first, that field-naturalists should collect from 
