Mar. 1903 I 
THE CONDOR 
45 
In the quail also Mr. Nelson has shown intergradation between a whole chain 
of contiguous races reaching from the eastern United States to southern Mexico 
and therefore we must link together in a trinomial name our white-throated, bar- 
breasted, bobwhite {Colinus virginianns) with a chestnut-bellied, black-throated, 
bird bearing no resemblance to it except in generic characters. And yet a race 
separated by some mites of country and not showing any actual intergradation 
with its nearest geographic ally, will be designated as a species with a binomial 
name, even though it be much more closely related to either of the above extremes 
than they are to each other ! This practice to my mind loses sight of the primary 
object of nomenclature which I take to be the designation of a distinguishable 
form in nature by a name which, when we see or hear it, will recall that form to 
mind. Anyone seeing a trinomial name today has no idea whether the form de- 
noted is a slight variation of the stock indicated by the specific name or something 
totally different perhaps occupying a region hundreds of miles distant, the inter- 
vening country being occupied by other forms between which by mere chance 
the thread of evolutionary development is not yet quite severed. 
The result of this use of trinomials will tend to the complete abandonment of 
this useful form of name. In fact some writers on mammals have already practic- 
ally lapsed into a pure binomial nomenclature. It seems to me that this tendency 
is very much to be regretted. A trinomial properly used means just twice as 
much as a binomial, and with the present practice of naming every slightly differ- 
entiated form, a purely binomial system will soon mean nothing except to the 
specialist on each group — the mind cannot place such a host of names. The tri- 
nomial on the other hand properly used gives at once, in the specific names, a 
clue to the general character of the form referred to. 
By continuing the practice of naming island and isolated forms by the degree 
of difference principle as is now done in the A. O. U. Checklist, and by extending 
this practice to the breaking up of such widel}" divergent series as the .song spar- 
rows and quail (which are comparatively few), I think that the valuable .S3"stem of 
trimonials can be preserved. That the series just referred to must be broken 
arbitrarily, I admit, and that they can be broken arbitrarily by such a body as the 
A. O. U. Committee and still meet with general satisfaction there is, I think, no 
doubt. Genera have been so divided in numerous instances and the conditions 
prevailing in both cases are the same, i. e., current personal opinion. 
The segregation of geographic races and the tracing of evolutionary develop- 
ment constitute one of the most valuable and instructive phases of modern system- 
atic work, but we should realize that all the facts so discovered cannot be em- 
bodied in our nomenclature and that if we give up the effort to so embody them, 
we in no sense mean to belittle them. 
To mj' mind we should aim to keep a name as nearly as possible to its original 
province and to remember that “nomenclature is a means not an end of zoological 
science.” 
