180 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVIII 



mammals required long series from different parts of Europe, 

 and these we did not possess, and could not readily obtain. Miller, 

 following the custom of mammalogists, lays great stress on sub- 

 species, but almost ignores individual variations, except such as 

 are expressed by the statistical data regarding size. By reading 

 the synonymy, one can see that many such variations have re- 

 ceived names, and I can not doubt that the time will come when 

 these names will be generally used. In this case, it will be 

 extremely desirable to use the same adjectival name for analogous 

 varieties of different species, and beyond the limits of subspecies 

 it ought not to be held that a name once used in a genus can not 

 be employed again. It may be true that most or all of the "indi- 

 vidual" varieties can be expressed by zygotic formulae, but one 

 can not remember all these formula?, nor use them in speech with 

 any comfort. Moreover, they have to do with the germinal con- 

 stitution rather than the patent characters. Little provides all 

 his varieties with polynomial English appellations, but would not 

 Latin varietal names be better? Following his theory con- 

 cerning the pigments, some of the varieties receive names 

 which do not suggest the animals at all; thus "brown-eyed 

 yellow," according to the apparently excellent colored plate, 

 is light orange-ferruginous, while "sooty-yellow" is dark gray 

 with yellowish under parts. Morgan 3 describes a wild variety of 

 M. musculus from Colorado, which he calls "mauve," but from 

 the detailed account it is rather "fauve," namely, fulvous or 

 yellowish brown. It must be similar to the Old World subspecies 

 azoricus, or possibly that subspecies introduced? If we had 

 standard scientific names for the different forms, we should try 

 to compare our specimens with the types or descriptions of those 

 names, and it would not be left to authors to use such miscellane- 

 ous descriptive terms as might occur to them. For Mus musculus, 

 possibly Little's apparently excellent colored plates might be 

 made the standards for a series of names. Thus his Fig. 9 

 (pi. 3) is the animal named riiger as long ago as 1801 ; Fig. 10, 

 the dilute black, would naturally take the name nigrescens. 

 Fig. 12 is probably albicans of Billberg, 1827. 



Insectivora 



i Ann. N. Y. Acad. Set., XXI, p. 106. 



