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MAR. t903[ 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 t9gether in a trinomial name our white-throated, bar- breasted, bobwhite (Colbzus virgi?za?zus)with a chestnut-bellied, black-throated, bird bearing no resemblance to it except in generic characters. And ye t a race separated by some miles 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 due to the general character of the form referred to. By continuing the practice of naming island and isolated forms by the degree qfdifference principle as is now done in the A. O. U. Checklist, and by extending this practice to the breaking up of such widely divergent series as the song spar- rows and quail (which are comparatively few), I think that the valuable system of trimonials can be preserved. That the series just referred to must be broken arbitrarily, I admit, and that they catz be broken arbitrarily by such a body as the A. O. U. Committee and still meet with general ?atisfaetion there is, I think, no doubt. Genera have been so divided in numerous instances and the conditions prevailing in both eases 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 aud instructive phases of modern system- atic work, but weshould 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 my 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."