FEMALE INDIGO FINCH. 
93 
this respect, his profound sagacity leading him in many instances 
to reject species which had received the sanction even of the 
experienced Brisson. Unfortunately, Gmelin, who pursued a 
practice directly the opposite, and compiled with a careless and 
indiscriminating hand, has been the oracle of zoologists for 
twenty years. The thirteenth edition of the Systema Naturse 
undoubtedly retarded the advancement of knowledge instead of 
promoting it, and if Latham had erected his ornithological 
edifice on the chaste and durable Linnean basis, the super¬ 
structure would have been far more elegant. But he first 
misled Gmelin, and afterwards suffered himself to be misled 
by him, and was therefore necessarily betrayed into numerous 
errors, although he at the same time perceived and corrected 
many others of his predecessor. We shall not enumerate the 
nominal species authorized by their works in relation to the 
present bird, since they may be ascertained by consulting our 
list of synonyms. On comparing this list with that furnished 
by Wilson, it will be seen that the latter is very incomplete. 
Indeed, as regards synonymy, Wilson’s work is not a little 
deficient; notwithstanding which however, it will be perpetuated 
as a monument of original and faithful observation of nature, 
when piles of pedantic compilations shall be forgotten. 
We refer our readers entirely to Wilson for the history of this 
very social little bird, only reserving to ourselves the task of 
assigning its true place in the system. As we have already 
mentioned in our “Observations,” he was the first who placed it 
in the genus Fringilla, (to which it properly belongs) after it had 
been transferred from Tanagra to Emberiza by former writers, 
some of whom had even described it under both, in one and the 
same work. But although Wilson referred this bird to its proper 
genus, yet he unaccountably permitted its closely allied species 
the Fringilla ciris, to retain its station in Emberiza, being under 
