8 
ON THE LESSEH GUILLEMOT 
IT. — Observations on the Lesser Guillemot and 
JBlack-billed Aiiky the Colymhns Minor and 
the Alca Pica of Linnceus, 
By Laurence Edmondston, Esq. 
Corresponding Member of the Wernerian Natural History 
Society. 
{Read mh April 1823.) 
The practice of conferring specific distinctions on ani- 
mals essentially identical_, has been, among systematic wri- 
ters, more general than that of confounding those which 
are distinct ; and in the progress of extended and accurate 
observation, it becomes perhaps equally advantageous to 
retrench fictitious species as to discover new ones. 
The system of Linn.eus^ long maintaining an influence 
so powerful and extended, and fixing on certain artificial, 
and often arbitrarily assumed, external characters, as legi- 
timate grounds of specific difference, contributed much to 
that excessive and fallacious multiplication of species of 
which we find so many instances in zoology. This was 
indeed a very natural result of that artificial system, which 
it was perhaps expedient and necessary for Linn^us to 
