﻿228 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



CHAP. II. 



ON THE NOMENCLATURE AND DESCRIPTION OF BIRDS. 



(183.) Nomenclature, it has been well observed, is 

 not strictly a part of the science of natural history ; 

 yet it is not only a convenient but an essential instru- 

 ment for making that science more readily understood. 

 Names convey definite ideas, as certain combinations of 

 letters produce certain words, whose meaning is known to 

 every one. Hence it is that a fixed standard for both 

 is equally essential. An author who violates those 

 rules of systematic nomenclature that are acted upon by 

 the common consent of the greatest naturalists, is as 

 inexcusable as one who chooses to use the orthography 

 of Chaucer in the nineteenth century. The old na- 

 turalists paid little attention to this ; and almost every 

 one, particularly in botany, invented a new name for 

 the object he described. As natural history treats of 

 innumerable animals whose names have not been in- 

 corporated in vernacular language, and has to express 

 ideas which are not to be met with in any other branch 

 of human knowledge, it follows that its nomenclature 

 should be expressive, and founded upon certain fixed 

 principles. If no meaning is conveyed in the construc- 

 tion of the words used, the memory has nothing to lay 

 hold of as a help to bring the object before the mind; 

 and if every author is at liberty to change or reject the 

 name of an object at his own will and pleasure, no 

 stability can possibly be given to a language which is 

 to enable two persons, placed at the opposite extremes 

 of the globe, to converse upon the same object. The 

 necessity of nomenclature being regulated by fixed laws, 

 has been advocated by Linnaeus, Fabricius, and all the 

 best systematic writers, both in zoology and botany. 



