PREFACE. 
Vll 
to escape his notice, and has only just woke up to the fact that 
things have been moving since he wrote his “Handbook to the 
Birds of Great Britain ” in 1872. The arrangement followed 
in my book was duly set forth by me in my “ Classification of 
Birds ” in 1891, and there is therefore nothing wonderful in an 
author following his own ideas. The same may be said of Mr. 
Harting’s remarks on my nomenclature, and if he had studied 
the Crows as diligently as he has done the Wading Birds, he 
Would probably have found little difficulty in recognising that 
the black plumage of the former birds is really their only 
warranty for inclusion in a single genus Corvus, and that the 
characters for generic separation, when properly weighed, are 
us important as the genera of Chamdriidcn, which Mr. Harting 
accepts without hesitation. Some of the changes in nomen- 
clature at which he “stands aghast” might have paralysed him 
at any moment during the last twenty years, and, as I have 
already said, the genera of the Corvidce are none of them of 
uiy own invention. 
Mr. Harting, moreover, entirely misunderstands the principle 
of the duplicate generic and specific names by which such titles 
as Gracuhis graculus are arrived at. It is not adopted for the 
Sake of attaching the name of the typical species to that of 
the genus. That this must often, and in fact generally, occur, 
's really a matter of chance, and I am sorry that the mere 
act of restoring Linnean specific names to their original posi- 
bon has resulted in the duplication of the name, but then the 
Binnean names ought never to have been used in a generic 
sense. Thus, if Linnaeus called the Partridge Tetrao perdix, 
name perdix ought to be retained at all costs for the species, 
^'^hen Perdb c was taken in a generic sense and the species was 
Called Perdix cincrea, I contend that it ought never to have 
cn allowed, and if, in restoring the Linnean specific name of 
perdix, it results that the oldest generic name is also Perdix, 
