120 GENERAL ORNITHOLOGY part n 



to be presently noted, the names of groups are arbitrary, at the will 

 of the person who establishes and designates them. The framer of 

 a genus, or the describer of a species, calls it what he pleases, and 

 the name he gives holds, subject to certain statutory regulations 

 which naturalists generally agree to abide by. The exceptions are 

 the names of families and sub-families, the former commonly being 

 made to end in -iim, the latter in -mas ; family Turdidx ; sub-family 

 Turdinx. This is a great convenience, since we always know the 

 rank intended to be noted by these word -forms. The names of 

 groups higher than species are almost invariably single words ; as, 

 order Passeres ; but sometimes, especially in cases of intermediate 

 groups, two words are used, one qualifying the other ; as, sub-order 

 Passeres Aeromyodi, or oscine Passeres. A generic or sub-generic 

 name is always a single word ; these, and the names of all higher 

 groups, invariably begin with a capital letter. 



Until quite recently, the scientiiio name of any individual bird 

 almost invariably consisted of two terms, generic and specific, — ^the 

 name of the genus, followed by the name of the species ; as, Turdus 

 viscimrus, for the missel-thrush. This is the "binomial nomen- 

 clature " (badly so called, for " binominal " or " bionymic " would be 

 better) ; introduced by Linnaeus in the middle of the last century. 

 It was a great improvement upon the former method of giving either 

 single arbitrary names to birds, often a mere Latin translation of 

 their vernacular nickname, or long descriptive names of several 

 words ; probably no other single improvement in a method of 

 nomenclature ever did so much to make the technique of nomen- 

 clature systematic. To couple the two terms at all was a great 

 thing, the convenience of which we who never felt its want can 

 hardly appreciate. To follow the generic by the specific term was 

 itself of the same advantage that it is to have the Smiths and 

 Browns of a directory entered under S and B, instead of by Johns 

 and Jameses ; besides according with the genius of the Romance 

 languages, which commonly put the adjective after the noun. A 

 Frenchman, for example, would say, Bec-croisi aux wiles blanches de 

 I'Amirique septentrimale, or " Bill-crossed to the wings white of the 

 America north," where we should say, "North American white- 

 winged Crossbill," and Linnseus would have written Loxia leucoptera. 

 The binomial scheme worked so well that it came to have the 

 authority and force of a statute, which few subsequent naturalists 

 have been inclined, and fewer have ventured, to violate ; while it 

 became an ex post facto law to prior naturalists, ruling them out of 

 court altogether, as far as the legitimacy of any of the names they 

 had bestowed was concerned. It necessarily rested, however, or at 

 any rate proceeded upon, the false idea of a species as a fixity. 

 Linnaeus himself experienced the inadequacy of his system to deal 



