Recently published Ornithological Works. 369 
and written amid the pressure of other official work in the 
author's “ private time.” 
In his preface to the present volume Sharpe makes 
the following out-spoken statement of his views on the 
new system of “trinomials/' which deserves attention, even 
if it may be not quite agreeable to the new school of 
Systematists. 
“ Some exception has been taken to mv recognition as 
species of all the forms described as subspecies or races with 
trinomial names. My views on this subject have often been 
stated, and as for trinomials I look upon the system as de¬ 
structive. I consider that the burden imposed upon Zoologists 
who follow this method for the naming of their specimens 
will become too heavy, and that the system will fall by its 
own weight. That races or subspecies of birds exist in 
nature no one can deny, but, to my mind, a binomial title 
answers every purpose.” 
In the preface to the fifth volume of Sharpe's f Hand-list' 
the total number of the known species of Birds is calculated 
as 18,939, and the genera as 2,810. In 1871 when George 
Robert Gray finished his f Hand-list' he admitted 2,915 
genera and 11,162 species. 
Having begun with the lowest birds—an arrangement 
which we by no means approve of—Sharpe has placed what 
he considered to be the most highly organized birds in his 
last volume. The series of Acromyodians, to which it is de¬ 
voted, is concluded by the Corvidae and their allies ; these, 
following Newton and Parker, Sharpe considered to be the 
most highly developed of the Class of Birds, though the 
reasons for assigning to them this high position have never 
been very clearly explained. 
In concluding this short notice of one of the most im¬ 
portant works in our branch of Zoological Science that has 
lately appeared, we need hardly enlarge on its value to the 
systematic worker wdio wants to find his references easily. 
There is an Index to every volume except the first. But 
there ought also to be a General Index to all the five volumes. 
SER. IX.-VOL. IV. 2 R 
