Page:A list of the birds of Australia 1913.djvu/14

 in the British Museum Collection. This should be carefully remembered by Australians, for if they examine the number of specimens catalogued they will quickly understand why much of that work is unstable. It had the merit of bringing together synonymy and making the efforts of future students easier; as a work of finality it has no claim, as the material was not available for accurate differentiation, while as much attention was not given to literature at that time as now. As the basis of all future work it is invaluable, and too much praise cannot be given to the originator and the men who performed it.

In 1888 Ramsay published his Tabular List of the Birds of Australia, which is an amended edition of his 1877 List. This became the recognized List at once, and so continued until 1899. At that date, Hall drew up a Key to the Birds of Australia, based upon the classification and nomenclature used in the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum; this at once came into general use and a second edition was published in 1906.

In 1901 Campbell's Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds appeared, and in this volume, marking the inauguration of the scientific study of Australian Oology, the British Museum Catalogue nomenclature was accepted in its entirety.

North, the ornithologist of the Australian Museum, Sydney, succeeded this with a similarly-named book, which forms a Special Catalogue of the Australian Museum and is not yet completed. North uses in this the British Museum Catalogue names. Legge, the author of the Birds of Ceylon, has made some excellent contributions to the study of our avifauna, and in all these the basis is the British Museum Catalogues. A most important paper, given as the Presidential address of the Biological Section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1904, on " the Zoogeograpliical Relations of the Ornis of the Various Sub-Regions of the Australian Region." is based entirely upon the forms admitted in those Catalogues, the nomenclature there utilized being strictly adhered to.

Littler's Birds of Tasmania also adheres to that nomination, and the whole of my own work is based upon the same foundation, the alterations made being due to "the discovery of new facts." The merest glance at this view of systematic work will show that Gould's nomenclature has not been "in current use for sixty years and upwards," but that the British Museum Catalogues have been the basis of all work since 1873—that is, for the last forty years.