PRELIMINARY NOTICES. 



forgetting that it is, most probably, their own ignorance, and 

 not the terms, which is in fault. Besides, although the author 

 has, it is true, anglicised many of those new terms, the merit 

 of their introduction must not be ascribed to him. He found 

 them, if not in current use, proposed at least by learned and 

 respectable ornithologists, and it beeame his duty to notice 

 them. The only new term which the author of Ornithologia 

 has introduced is citrine! for the yellow-hammer ; his rea- 

 son for doing this is assigned in page 226; even this term 

 can hardly be called neiv, being anglicised from citrinella. 



The author laments, as much as any one can possibly do, 

 that numerous terms, and to those unacquainted with the 

 science, new they must be, present themselves to us in books 

 treating of ornithology : he laments also the almost infinite 

 variety of names, both scientific as well as trivial, which 

 are applied to birds by different naturalists: he complains, 

 likewise, of the heedlessness and, in some instances, wan- 

 tonness, with which terms have been introduced ; thus 

 rendering the study of ornithology at once perplexing 

 and repulsive. But, how much soever he may lament all 

 this, it was his duty, nevertheless, as an historian of the 

 science, to exhibit it as it is, despairing as he does of ever 

 seeing it, at least in its nomenclature, what he could wish 

 it to be. 



The author is old enough to remember the first intro- 

 duction of the present Chemical Nomenclature, and those 

 who remember it as he does, can tell how it was opposed 

 and derided; yet it has steadily made its way: he who 

 should now, for a moment, contend that Glaubers salts was 

 a better term than sulphate of soda, for the same substance, 

 would assuredly be dignified with a fool's cap. Although it 

 is not certain that, fifty years hence, sylvia luscinia will be 

 preferred to the nightingale, yet, as a more correct know- 



h 



