THE NEW CHECK-LIST
WE ARE all more or less interested in the forthcoming check-list, now under preparation; and most of us have ideas as to what we should like to see therein. That everybody should be satisfied with the results, whatever they may be, is beyond hope. No matter what action is taken there are sure to be some disappointed ones.
Some of the reforms that I, personally, should like to see come to pass, seem beyond the grounds of possibility. Such is, for instance, the suppression of the Law of Priority as interpreted in Canons XII-XIV of the Code. The only apparent way to make our nomenclature stable is for the Committee to take high-handed measures and say that so-and-so shall be the names of the species, for all time to come, as long as the present system flourishes, grammar, philology, or priority to the contrary notwithstanding.
This would, I am aware, raise a storm of protest. But the international confusions arising therefrom certainly would be no greater than they now are, and perhaps would be less, as conflictions once learned would stay learned and be subject to but half the change that they are now. The case of Stercorarius parasiticus is a fine example of international discord, where the same name applies to two different species according to two current systems of nomenclature. It matters very little what a species is called, so long as the name is permanent and all know the form to which it applies. All our literature refers to Corvus americanus. What good it has done to change it to brachyrhynchos I fail to see. It has antiquated whole shelves of our literature and, in this special case, has given us a difficult for a simple and thoroly characteristic name. The solution, however, of this question may be, as yet, far in the future, and perhaps belongs to the millennium rather than to the present.
There are, however, other desirable things that seem more probable of realization. Some of them are mentioned in the last issue of The Condor over the initials "J. G." on page 154.
The suggestion of applying qualifying terms to each and all of the varieties of a subspecifically divided species is most wholesome, and should be applied to the scientific as well as the vernacular nomenclatural system. Modern subspecific ideas should not recognize the superiority of one variety over another without good evolutionary reasons for so doing. Why call one form a species and the rest varieties just because one of them had, of necessity, to be discovered first? To do so, not only fails to represent the true facts of the case, but in many instances actually falsifies them. The trinomial system necessitates the consideration of the term "species" as a collective noun, of which the varieties or subspecies are the component parts.
The western robin is just as much the "American robin" as the eastern form and, as such, has just as much right to that name. We should, then, be able to speak of both forms as a whole, as the American robin, Merula migratoria. When we are certain of the subspecific identification (not always easy or possible) or wish to differentiate the two forms, we can then say eastern robin, M. m. migratoria, or western robin, M. m. propinqua, as the case may be. Without doubt, this fact of the equality of all the varieties of a species, should be shown graphically in the arrangement of the coming list. Heretofore every slight variation that has been
