On the Nomenclature of Birds 
The inclusion of a fair crop of technical names in the few 
preceding pages reminds us that it is now well nigh time that 
we attempted to elucidate the question of those much abused 
"Latin** terms which will be found plentifully scattered 
throughout this book. 
First of all for a general justification for their use at all 
and then a few words about the manner in which they are 
formed and employed. 
In the museum we are continually asked why things arc 
not labelled with "readable and understandable'" Engflish 
names. Well, nowadays we endeavour to do this, rather 
against our inclination we might say, and the result is some- 
times amusing! 
It will be readily understood that many of the tiny crea- 
tures inhabiting this countr^^ have not yet had English names 
applied to them and in a good number of cases we have had 
to manufacture a name. The result has not always been 
pretty or euphonious. There seems little point in labelling 
3 bird for instance as a **babbler" — one must say something 
else about it because a few hundreds of different kinds of 
babbler are already known. Many of these are very alike in 
size and plumage and one soon uses up the available geogra- 
phical adjectives Malayan babbler' \ "Sumatran babbler* \ 
etc., and also the descriptive "blue-faced", **brown-backed'', 
"spotted", etc. A certain outlet is provided by the use of 
the name of the naturalist who first described the bird and so 
we can go on for a bit longer — Smithes babbler, Brown *s 
babbler, Jones* babbler and so on but sooner or later the stick- 
ing point comes and then it is that one is forced to such names, 
(almost sentences) as the "Himalayan golden-backed three- 
toed woodpecker" or "the small eastern orange-breasted fly- 
catcher" both of which have recently appeared in print, the 
first in a list of Indian birds and the later in a handlist of 
the birds of Borneo. It may be mentioned that a naturalist of 
any nationality would immediately recognise the first bird 
as Tiga shorii and the second as Poliomyias iuteolti but still 
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