I9I5- 



Rcvi€7vs 



(aggregate), the Continental (as distinct from the British) Song-Thrush, 

 or the Redwing. 



The total number of trinomials is, of course, very largely reduced by 

 the refusal to adopt them for the typical form — a refusal that rids us of 

 the unwelcome rush of self -echoing names like Pica pica pica and Cocco- 

 thyaustes coccothraustes coccothraitstes that came on us like a deluge in the 

 Hartert Hand -List. In other ways, too, the number of trinomials is 

 much diminished. The Committee have not recognised as valid all the 

 subspecific distinctions conferred by ]\Ir. Hartert on British forms of 

 wide -spread birds. The Nuthatch, Goldcrest, Stonechat, Hedge-sparrow, 

 Tesser Spotted Woodpecker and Green Woodpecker of the Britannic area 

 are cases in which such recognition is refused, and these birds, accordingly, 

 have binomial instead of trinomial names. In other cases the trinomial 

 has been escaped by an opposite process, i.e., by recognising as a full 

 species a British bird to which Mr, Hartert accorded only subspecific 

 rank, such as the Pied Wagtail (which he had considered a sub-species of 

 Motacilla alba) and the Yellow Wagtail, retained as M. rail in the present 

 List, though in the Hand -List it figured as only sub-specifically distinct 

 from the Blue -headed Wagtail under the title M. flava rayi. The Scandi- 

 navian or true Gyr- Falcon is also here regarded as a full species, Hierofako 

 gyyfaico, though the Iceland and Greenland Falcons are only subspecifi- 

 callv distinguished from each other as H. islandus and H. islandiis candi- 

 cans. The Hand -List made all three of them forms of one species, 

 Falco ritsticolus. 



Irish naturalists are not deprived of the satisfaction that they derived 

 from the recognition by Messrs. Hartert and Ogilvic -Grant of distinct 

 Irish forms of the Jay, Coal -Titmouse, and Dipper, On the other hand, 

 it is rather startling to find that the Parrot Crossbill, which both in the 

 British Bird-Book (Appendix, p. 467) and m the Hand-List of 1912 was 

 treated as a "full species" under the name Loxia pityopsittacus, is 

 pronounced by the B. O. II. Committee to be undeserving of even sub- 

 specific rank. We are evidently as far from agreement as to the amount 

 of distinction that constitutes a sub-species as we are as to where the 

 line should be dra\\ n in sacrificing long -established names on the altar 

 of a theoretical but absolutely unobtainable uniformity of language. 



In the matter of classification the Committee have decided on following 

 Dr. Sharpe's " Hand -List of Birds," though reversing the sequence so 

 as to substitute a descending rather than an ascending ord^r. Even 

 with this modification, the arrangement will be to most British and to 

 nearly all Irish bird -students an extremely unfamiliar one. We are now 

 confronted with the fact that four such important and authoritative 

 publications on British Birds as the late Howard Saunders's Manual, 

 Kirkman's "British Bird-Book," the " Hand -List " of E. Hartert and 

 his three colleagues, and (not least) the newest List produced by the 

 British Ornithologists' L^nion — all four issued within the past sixteen 

 years — follow four different systems of classification, the number of 

 recognised Orders varying between eleven in Kirkman's " Bird-Book,'" 

 and twenty -one in the present B. O. U. List. It is hardly surprising 

 that the late Professor Newton should have decided on bringing out his 



