22 Bartramian Names in Ornithology. (January, 
places described not only the habits and distribution of some of 
the birds he met with in his travels, but has given more or less 
careful descriptions of the birds themselves, designating them 
also by binomial names. In addition to this he has given, at 
pages 288-296, a nominal list of two hundred and fifteen spe- 
cies, in which he has usually mentioned the species under Latin 
binomial names, to which he has added an English name ; occa- 
sionally to the Latin names he has appended a few words of de- 
scription, also in Latin; while certain typographical signs are 
prefixed to denote the places of residence of the different species 
and their migrations. These signs, with the simple names, con- 
stitute in most cases all that approaches to a description of the 
species that Bartram has given; yet the attempt is now made 
to establish priority for these names, on the ground that the 
species thus designated were sufficiently described to substantiate 
the claim, and to set them up in place of names backed by good 
description and thoroughly familiar through long use. 
In this list of two hundred and fifteen species, quite a number 
of names prove to be synonymous with others; thirty-six are 
given by Dr. Coues as “undetermined,” and ten or a dozen more 
are only guessed at; leaving fully one fifth of the whole number 
almost hopelessly in doubt. In addition to this there are thirty- 
five or more polynomial names. Of the one hundred and eighty 
species of the names of which Dr. Coues attempts to give the 
present equivalents, nearly all had been previously described in 
the Systema Nature of Linneus, a work that must have been 
accessible to Bartram if any European book on natural history 
could be; and that it was so is evident from his references to it 
in the botanical portions of his work. Bartram has, in fact, in 
some groups employed a large proportion of Linnean names, 
while in others he has either altogether ignored them or was ig- 
norant of them. Of his twenty-two species of rapacious birds, 
all but three of the recognizable species were already in the 
Systema Nature, yet only five of them appear under the Lin- 
næan names; of his seventeen remaining names only one, Vul- 
tur atratus, is strictly entitled to recognition. Of the rest of 
the land birds, numbering one hundred and seven species, a 
dozen of the names are either polynomial, synonyms, or undeter- 
minable, while of the remaining ninety-five, eighty of the species 
had been previously named and described in the Systema Na- 
ture, or by other writers preceding Bartram; yet less than 
half of these names were used by Bartram, who instead gave 
