FEMALE INDIGO FINCH. 343 
many instances to reject species which had received the sanc- 
tion even of the experienced Brisson. Unfortunately, Gmelin, 
who pursued a practice directly the opposite, and compiled 
with a careless and indiscriminating hand, has been the oracle 
of zoologists for twenty years. The thirteenth edition of the 
“Systema Naturee” undoubtedly retarded the advancement of 
knowledge instead of promoting it; and if Latham had erected 
his ornithological edifice on the chaste and durable Linnean 
basis, the superstructure would have been far more elegant. 
But he first misled Gmelin, and afterwards suffered himself 
to be misled by him, and was therefore necessarily betrayed 
into numerous errors, although he at the same time perceived 
and corrected many others of his predecessor. We shall not 
enumerate the nominal species authorised by their works in 
relation to the present bird, since they may be ascertained by 
consulting our list of synonyms. On comparing this list with 
that furnished by Wilson, it will be seen that the latter is very 
incomplete. Indeed, as regards synonymy, Wilson’s work is 
not a little deficient ; notwithstanding which, however, it will 
be perpetuated as a monument of original and faithful obser- 
vation of nature, when piles of pedantic compilations shall be 
forgotten. 
We refer our readers entirely to Wilson for the history of 
this very social little bird, only reserving to ourselves the task 
of assigning its true place in the system. As we have already 
mentioned in our “ Observations,” he was the first who placed 
it inthe genus Fringilla (to which it properly belongs), after 
it had been transferred from Tanagra to Emberiza by former 
writers, some of whom had even described it under both in 
one and the same work. But although Wilson referred this 
bird to its proper genus, yet he unaccountably permitted its 
closely allied species, the Fringzlla ctris, to retain its station 
in Emberiza, being under the erroneous impression that a large 
bill was characteristic of that genus. This mistake, however, 
is excusable when we consider that almost all the North 
American birds which he found placed in it, through the 
