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16 THE CONDOR Vol. XXIII 
the species run over from one page to another. Serial numbers for families, 
genera, and species, as in Sharpe’s Hand-list, seem to be of no value whatever. 
A continuous series of numbers for all species, as in the American list, is con- 
venient for marking eggs and in making lists of exchange specimens. Addi- 
tional names can be numbered by the decimal system. 
The value of our world check list will be much more increased, if it con- 
tain some synonymy for each species. This synonymy should include refer- 
ence to the original description or basis of the name; reference to the accepted 
combination, if different from the original; reference to a few monographie 
works or faunas containing full synonymies—for example, the Catalogue of 
Birds of the British Museum and Ridgway’s Birds of North and Middle Amer- 
ica; reference to a good plate or to such other illustration as exists. The syno- 
nymy for most species would not run over two or three lines and would seldom 
be over six lines. The information contained therein would be well worth the 
space. | 
In Sharpe’s Hand-list there are approximately 22,000 genera and species, 
listed on 2,066 pages in five volumes. It ought to be possible to put the world 
hist, including the index, in five volumes of 500 pages each. The pagination 
should be continuous, so as to simplify the indexing. 
I am disappointed to notice comment to the effect that a new edition of the 
Check-list of North American Birds is to be prepared ‘‘ which should constitute 
the nearctic volume of the proposed ‘Systema Avium’ to be gotten up by the 
B. O. U. and the A. O. U. jointly.’’ This idea does not at all fit my conception 
of what is needed. We should have one check list to inelude all the genera and 
species of the world in systematic order, so that one list will come to be used 
by ornithologists the world over. 
The members of a national organization, such as the American Ornitholo- 
gists’ Union or the British Ornithologists’ Union, probably think that it is be- 
vond the province of their society to consider the status or the nomenclature of 
exotic spevies of birds. If this be true, and I do not undertake to contest it, 
then there is need of an international society or committee that shall consider 
the nomenclature of the birds of Timbuctoo with the same interest as that of 
the birds of the San Francisco Bay region, the District of Columbia, or the 
British Isles. 
The interest of the student should not stop at an international boundary 
line. That a species is not known to occur north of the Rio Grande is a poor 
reason for barring a specimen from the cabinet of an American ornithologist. 
However, the American list tends to bring about this absurd discrimination 
against all foreign species to the detriment of the individual student. In other 
words, the majority of American ornithologists are extremely provincial with 
regard to birds. Fortunately Mr. Ridgway’s stupendous work on the birds of 
North and Middle America and the activity of a few other Americans in their 
study of South American birds will help to break down this artificial barrier. 
European ornithologists seem to have been keener in the study of exotic 
faunas and floras than have Americans. With the British there have been two 
very efficient causes leading to this condition. In the first place the birds of 
the British Isles had been studied and named for years before there was an. 
ornithologist in North America. In the second place Britain’s overseas terri- 
torial interests have thrown English naturalists into exotic fields, and their 
collections have helped to build up the magnificent series in the British Mu- 
