116 THE OENITHOLOGIST. 



building is concerned, a lazy fellow, and often makes the old home of a Crow 

 or Magpie suit his purpose." I think that Mr. Kearton has copied some 

 book in the latter instance, when his own experience teaches him to believe 

 that Sparrow-Hawks build their own nests. I am inclined to believe Mr. 

 Davenport's paper to have, as nearly as possible, solved the mystery 

 which has been connected with this bird. — C. Milburn (Middlesborough). 

 I must apologise to Mr. Davenport if I misunderstood his remarks on 

 the Sparrow-Hawk's well-known habit of utilising other birds' nests. I 

 certainly derived the impression that he considered the birds always adopted 

 this course, though he does not say it in so many words ; and Mr. Ruskin 

 Butterfield seems to have found the paper open to the same construction 

 (p. 63). Moreover, having just carefully read through Mr. Davenport's 

 interesting paper again, I may say that my original interpretation of it 

 would remain unchanged but for the author's assurance that it is erroneous. 

 — A. Holte Macpherson. 



Nomenclature in Ornithology.*— I much fear the purport of my 

 remarks in the last issue of this Journal (p. 94) was misunderstood by Mr. 

 Swann. Now-a-days a denial of the mutability of species is tantamount to 

 an expression of inability to understand the evidence which the examination 

 of a large series of specimens of one species of bird from widely different 

 areas of its range affords. If evolution be a fact (and of this no one can feel 

 more confident than myself) the number of individuals belonging to what 

 Mr. Swann calls valid species must be immeasurably smaller than the 

 number of varietal forms. It is just the difficulty of drawing the line between 

 a species and a race that led me to hazard the opinion that the consistent 

 application of a trinomial to races ' ' would be attended with bewilderment and 

 chaos." To quote from an editorial comment on a kindred subject, con- 

 tained in the July number (vol. ix., p. 4) of "Natural Science," " If the pro- 

 cess of evolution is going on under our eyes, surely it is not correct to treat 

 the evolving species as though already evolved." A very distinguished orni- 

 thologistf affirms ' ' that the boundaries between a race (that is a local variety, 

 which may be of the slightest) and a species are at present indeterminable." 

 The same writer, also, quotes with approval the statement that " Hereafter 

 we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between 

 species and well-marked varieties is that the latter are known, or believed, 

 to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations, whereas, 

 species were formerly thus connected." Dr. Elliott Coues, who may be taken 

 as fairly expressing the views of American naturalists in regard to trinomials, 



* Errata. — Page 94, line 25, for "these worda," read "trinomials." Page 95, line 20, for 

 'latitudes" read "altitudes." 

 t Professor Alfred Newton, Zoology, new edition, p. 126. 



