228 
ON THE CLASSIFICATION OP BIRDS. 
CHAP. II. 
ON THE NOMENCLATURE. AND DESCRIPTION OF BIRDS. 
(183.) Nomencl.ature, it has been well observed, is 
not strictly a part of the science of natural history ; 
yet it is not only a convenient but an essential instru- 
ment for making that science more readily understood. 
Names convey definite ideas, as certain combinations of 
letters produce certain words, whose meaning is known to 
every one. Hence it is that a fixed standard for both 
is equally essential. An author who violates those 
rules of systematic nomenclature that are acted upon by 
the common consent of the greatest naturalists, is as 
inexcusable as one wbo chooses to use the ortliography 
of Chaucer in the nineteenth century. The old na- 
turalists paid little attention to this ; and almost every 
one, particularly in botany, invented a new name for 
the object he described. As natural history treats of 
innumerable animals whose names have not been in- 
corporated in vernacular language, and has to express 
ideas which are not to be met with in any other branch 
of human knowledge, it follows that its nomenclature 
should be expressive, and founded upon certain fixed 
principles. If no meaning is conveyed in the construc- 
tion of the words used, the memory has nothing to lay 
hold of as a help to bring the object before the mind ; 
and if every author is at liberty to change or reject the 
name of an object at his own will and pleasure, no 
stability can possibly be given to a language which is 
to enable two persons, placed at the opposite extremes 
of the globe, to converse upon the same object. The 
necessity of nomenclature being regulated by fixed laws, 
has been advocated by Linnsetis, Fabricius, and all the 
best systematic writers, both in zoology and botany. 
