THE BIRDS OF SINGAPORE ISLAND 
Two or indeed many species of the same genus can of 
course breed side by sfde in the same country but sub-species 
being purely geographical races of the same species occupy 
guite separate although often contiguotis breeding areas, 
•here is at the moment no settled idea as to what constitutes a 
'full" species and m ornithological journals one continually 
reads the most unsatisfactory "I do not consider the differences 
sufficiently' well marked to be of more that sub-spectfic value'*. 
It would seem that the only way to avoid this difficulty is 
to take an extremely broad view and^ if the breeding ranges 
do not overlap, to treat any number of more or less similar 
birds even though the joint breeding areas extend round the 
'world as sub-species of a widely distributed parent species. 
This is. however, getting rather far into an invoh^ed aspect of 
ornithology which is at the moment outside our province and 
we will conclude this paragraph by saying that in Malaysia we 
have yet much to learn concerning the identity and range of 
sub-species, so much so in fact that a number of the names 
we have here applied to Singapore birds are quite likely not 
strictly accurate. 
The question is complicated by the fact that we are some- 
times by no means certain to which species the old time natura- 
lists referred when they bestowed new names on birds. The 
old descriptions which one must take into accotmt are often 
very brief and sometiraed buried in little known journals, and 
the resuscitation of a short and overlooked paper publislied 
many years ago may alter the currently accepted names of 
quite a lot of birds. It may he pointed out that there is nothing 
to prevent a naturalist from publishing descriptions of new 
Species in any journal, and that such work must be recognised 
or at least considered by other workers, for it seems that the 
only way in which the synonomy of birds (and other animals 
and plants) will ever be straightened out is by the strict 
application of a rule of priority. 
If a species is indicated by two names only it means that 
it is the same wherever found or in other words that it has 
no recognisable sub-species but even in this case it is usna« to 
repeat the specific name thus — Con>us monedula moncdula or 
more briefly Cot-z'its m. monedula> 
[16] 
