PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
125 
natural lines of cleavage. It is forbidden to cut them across the 
grain. 
There is no great harm in the curator of a museum amusing 
himself with inventing pseudo-genera, so long as he uses them 
only as an artificial index to his species, like the Linnean order 
of plants ; and there is no great harm in his chopping his big 
genera into little bits, so as to make them as easy to diagnose as a 
species ; but the scientific ornithologist is obliged to construct his 
genera upon different lines, even if he has to spend ten times the 
labour in the process, lie knows full well that no interest of any 
kind attaches to the geographical distribution of pseudo-genera, and 
that their recognition stands in the way of the interest which is 
felt in the geographical distribution of natural groups. He also 
knows that great interest attaches to the geographical distribution 
of genera apart from that of species. 
Genera are to a large extent matters of convenience, but they 
ought to be made subject to certain laws, of which one at least is 
imperative. Xo species can under any circumstances be placed in 
a genus unless there bo some species in the genus to which it is 
more nearly related than it is to any and every other known 
bird. 
Probably the species with red mandibles ought to be removed 
from the genus Halcyon , certainly the species with flattened 
mandibles ought not. 
Some of the species of the genus Halcyon have very wide ranges. 
The range of Halcyon chloric extends from the shores of the Red 
Sea to the Pelew Islands and the Solomon Islands, though it is not 
known to have occurred between the shores of the Gulf of Aden 
and those of the Gulf of Bengal. Eastwards its range appears to 
be continuous from the Andaman Islands along both coasts of the 
Burma peninsula and the islands of the Malay Archipelago to the 
Philippine Islands, the Pelew Islands, Xcw Guinea, Xew Ireland, 
and the Solomon Islands. 
The range of Halcyon cancla extends further south, but not so 
far west. It embraces Borneo, Malabar, the Moluccas, Xew Guinea, 
and New Ireland, extending to the Solomon Islands as far south 
