

Birds. 2733 



direction. With this view, it would be of no mean importance, not 

 only to the unlearned, but even to those who, although acquainted 

 with Greek and Latin, are nevertheless not unfrequently unable to get 

 to the roots of those extraordinary combinations which they have to 

 encounter in the nomenclature of science, if it were expected and re- 

 quired from every writer who proposes a new genus, or who first gives 

 a name to a new species, that he should at the time state fully and 

 clearly the meaning of the word employed, point out and explain its 

 component parts if it has any, and intimate the reasons which have 

 led to its adoption. I have but very few acquaintances who have paid 

 attention to Natural History ; but among these, few as they are, there 

 has been a general complaint of the difficulties arising from the multi- 

 plicity and the complexity of scientific names, and from the changes 

 to which those names are almost continually being subjected.* 



I have no acquaintance with the birds and the names now taken 

 notice of, except from the publication which has been mentioned. 

 On this account, as well as from my own defective knowledge on the 

 subject in general, it is more than likely that many of the foregoing 

 remarks are founded on ignorance and misapprehension : they have, 

 however, occurred to my mind naturally, and in some instances 

 strongly, while looking over Dr. Wagner's Reports ; and it is possible 

 that some of them may have presented themselves to others who are 

 placed — with respect to Natural History and to the consultation of 

 new and expensive publications — in the same isolated circumstances 

 as I am myself. With this view, I now humbly offer them to the 

 pages of the ' Zoologist.' 



James Smith. 



Manse of Monquhitter by Turriff, Aberdeenshire, 

 November 30, 1849. 



I* On this particular point may be quoted the following sentence from Dr. Man- 

 tell : " It was my intention to have given figures of all the genera into which the nu- 

 merous fossil species have been divided by modern observers ; but I found the attempt 

 hopeless, from the changes in nomenclature and arrangement which are constantly 

 taking place." (' Medals of Creation,' i. 343.) 



VIII 



