Classification of Birds. 79 



gical Bibliography, we are not altogether satisfied. The lists of works 

 he has given are certainly not so complete or so extensive as they 

 ought to have been, although he professes to enumerate such only 

 as are essential to the student, or eminently beautiful for their exe- 

 cution ; nor do we think his estimate of their peculiar merits are al- 

 ways correct or altogether impartial. We do not object to Mr Swain- 

 son's introducing so many of his own works under their respective 

 heads, to which he conceives they belong, but we do think that those 

 of a similar character and import by other authors should have met 

 with the same liberal treatment. Why has he not, under the head 

 " Partial systematic works," where both series of his own Zoologir- 

 cal Illustrations have been placed, also inserted another work as ex- 

 tensive, and, we believe, as useful to the ornithologist as his own. 

 We mean the quarto work of Sir William Jardine and Mr Selby. 

 Several continental works of eminence are also altogether omitted, 

 or else merely glanced at. We perceive no mention of the names of 

 Bechstein, Faber, Nilson, and various others, and though Kuhl's 

 Conspectus Psitlacormn is mentioned in laudatory terms, the able 

 monograph of Wagler of the same family, published subsequently 

 to that of Kuhl's, is passed over without notice. 



From ornithological bibliography he passes to the consideration 

 of those rules instituted by the most eminent naturalists of an ear- 

 lier date, and which have since received the sanction of their fol- 

 lowers, and been admitted as laws or aphorisms not to be violated, 

 in the construction of generic, subgeneric, and specific names. Upon 

 each of those he makes some pertinent observations, and we trust 

 that what he has said on that law which announces that " the high- 

 est reward of a naturalist is to have a genus called after his name," 

 will meet with the consideration it deserves, and tend to put a stop 

 to a practice which of late years has rapidly been gaining ground 

 to the detriment of science, viz., that of complimenting individuals, 

 many of them altogether unknown in the records of ornithologi- 

 cal science, by imposing their names upon newly discovered species, 

 a practice which deprives the true naturalist of what has been pro- 

 claimed his highest reward, and brings into disrepute and contempt 

 what was once esteemed a scientific honour. We also agree with 

 Mr Swainson in the sentiments he has expressed in regard to ver- 

 nacular nomenclature, a subject that of late has undergone conside- 

 rable discussion, and though we have carefully perused the argu- 

 ments of those who advocate what they consider a reformation in 

 the system, we cannot perceive that the change they contemplate 

 would be attended with the smallest possible advantage. To the 



