Page:A list of the birds of Australia 1913.djvu/13

 altered some of his own names in favour of those given to the same bird by Latham.

In 1865 he published his Handbook to the Birds of Australia. This is noteworthy in that though the text is practically that of the Birds of Australia, the nomenclature and classification is much changed owing to the claims of priority. In view of the Committee's action, it must come as a surprise to learn that Gould was a great upholder of the Law of Priority as laid down by Strickland in 1840. It must be one of the quaint ironies of fate that one who worked under that Law, should be utilized by the Committee as a worker for whose sake that Law should be rejected. In the Handbook Gould utilized genera of very narrow limits, and proposed many new ones as well as accepting those introduced by those accurate and careful workers Bonaparte and Cabanis. It is somewhat remarkable that, independently, the Committee and myself should reinstate these Gouldian genera in the present year.

The Committee make it appear that Gould's nomenclature had persisted in use for "sixty years and upwards," without much alteration. In putting forward this statement a great error has been committed, as sixty years would lead us back to the publication of the Birds of Australia; the nomenclature there offered was amended by Gould himself in his Handbook in 1865. If that date be accepted as the final Gouldian nomenclature, we find it only lasted, without considerable changes taking place, for twelve years: for in the year 1877 Ramsay published, in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, a "List of the Birds of Australia," and that list was based upon Gould's Handbook with all the alterations shora to be necessary by extra-Australian workers. These are very considerable because many of Gould's species were reduced to synonymy through the recognition that they were simply forms or what we now term subspecies. The number is noticeable among the extra-limital species; that is, birds having a wide range and which also occur in Australia. In addition many of the generic names proposed and utilized by Gould were rejected by Ramsay, who acted upon the advice of Bowdler Sharpe and other extra-limital workers. This list was accepted by the few Australian workers of that time, as it was being continually endorsed in the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, at that time in course of publication. This was commenced in 1873 and completed in 1898: it consists of monographs of the Birds of the world, as represented