120 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



We have now traced the scientific history of Brisson's original Ladovicianus, 

 through all its complex ramifications. The whole detail is a good example of 

 the drudgery to which modern naturalists must be condemned, if they are com- 

 pelled by the laws of nomenclature to pay that scrupulous attention to the names 

 and works of authors, whose writings, useful and even valuable in their day, are 

 now become almost unintelligible to modern science. If this principle is to be 

 followed, the present race of naturalists will find full employment as commentators 

 only upon the works of their predecessors ; books and synonymes, rather than 

 nature, must be their sole study ; for the time that is consumed in unravelling one 

 set of such errors will frequently be sufficient for describing ten new objects. We 

 most fully coincide in the propriety, and even the common justice, of distinguishing 

 every object in nature by the specific name imposed upon it by its first describer, 

 provided it is not glaringly defective or otherwise erroneous ; but we must protest 

 against reviving all those, the meanings of which are either imperfectly stated or 

 are now unintelligible. By citing such accounts as authorities, when in point of 

 fact they are none, we perpetuate error, and transmit to posterity the same entan- 

 glement of synonymes which we ourselves may have vainly tried to unravel. 

 These sentiments, from particular circumstances, we feel obliged to express some- 

 what strongly, yet without intending the least personal disrespect to some estimable 

 naturalists, whom we could name, and whose labours in their generation have, no 

 doubt, materially benefited science. They have, in fact, accelerated that important 

 revolution in the modes of studying nature which are now prevalent, by proving 

 that nothing short of actual observation and minute comparison can be depended 

 upon. — Sw. 



DESCRIPTION 



Of a specimen killed at Carlton House, June, 1827. 



Colour of the head, back, and lesser wing coverts, deep pearl-grey * ; the exterior edges 

 of the scapularies and tail coverts paler, approaching to greyish-white. A black band 

 commences at the nostrils, unites with its fellow at the base of the upper mandible, 

 and, becoming broader as it passes backwards, terminates obtusely on the side of the 

 neck : it includes the whole of the upper and under eyelids, and separates the grey colour 

 of the upper parts of the head from the white of the ventral aspect. The (ten) primaries 

 and their coverts are umber-brown ; all the former, except the first short or spurious 

 one, have a white space next their quills half an inch in breadth ; their tips are pale, as if 

 worn, except the two next the secondaries, which are terminated by a white border. The 



i 



* Cendri bleuatre pur. — Temminck, 



