14 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE: 



a matter of fact, be (the speaker) had nothing to do with the change 

 of name, beyond submitting his series of specimens to Mr. Sbarpe's 

 critical judgment ; and he was afterwards merely the " passive 

 bucket 'in communicating Mr. Sbarpe's paper to the Society. In 

 selecting the speaker's name to distinguish the species, Mr. Sharpe 

 only gave effect to a suggestion made by Dr. Otto Finsch, of Bremen, 

 many years before. Agreeing, as he did, in the technical accuracy of 

 Mr. Sbarpe's conclusions, he (Sir Walter Buller) had no alternative 

 but to adopt the proposed new name. Asa rule, however, his own 

 tendencies were conservative, and throughout his work he had, in 

 regard to nomenclature, observed as far as possible the rule of "quieta 

 -non movere." For example, he bad declined to follow Dr. Meyer, of 

 Dresden, in substituting the name of Notomis hochstetteri for Notomis 

 mantelli, because he did not consider that the differences shown to 

 exist between the fossil and the recent birds were sufficient to warrant 

 the change. On the other hand, he had not hesitated to expunge 

 from the list of species String ops greyi (so named by Mr. G. B. Grey 

 in compliment to Sir George Grey) as soon as he had satisfied himself 

 that it was a mere variety of the common Stringops habrojrtilus. He 

 was very glad however, of the opportunity afterwards of re-connecting 

 Sir George Grey's name with the New Zealand Avifauna by dedicating 

 to him a new form of Ocydromv.s. Sir Walter Buller concluded his 

 remarks by saying that in such matters as this, people should not be 

 thin-skinned, for a scientist should have nothing before him but the 

 elucidation of truth, and in the fixing or altering of names there can 

 no escape from the accepted rules of zoological nomenclature. 



An active discussion, led off by Mr. Maskell, then followed as to 

 the value of characters now generally accepted by naturalists in the 

 establishment of species. 



Sir Walter Buller, in reply, said that the only importance he 

 attached to systematic classification was as an aid to memory in the 

 study of the natural objects themselves. Birds, like other animals, 

 resolved themselves into natural groups, and could be most con- 

 veniently studied in tbat manner. The discrimination of genera and 

 species was, after all, empiric, and often very arbitary. Nothing was 

 easier than to raise the gucestio vexata, What constitutes the difference 

 between a species and a permanent variety ? On no point probably 

 were naturalists so much divided — some carrying their discrimination 

 of forms to an extreme, others erring in an opposite direction. In 

 fact most systematists might be divided into two classes — " lumpers " 

 and " splitters." The thing was to hit the happy mean. There was 

 much truth in what Mr. Maskell had said, and no doubt modifications 

 of structure were of the first importance in the discrimination of 

 species ; but, as to nomenclature, it seemed to him that simplicity 

 was the thing of all others to be desired. To adopt the system more 

 or less in use among ornithologists of making sub-species or varieties 

 was to his mind very objectionable, because it had the effect of 

 encumbering the literature with names. For example, Apteryx 

 hulleri, as it is now called, appeared in Dr. Finsch's list as Apteryx 

 australis variety mantelli. According to the generally-accepted view 

 among English systematists, the amount of variation necessary to 

 constitute a species is not of much importance, and may be left to 



