Mr. G. R. Gray's Catalogue of the Genera of Birds. 189 



XV. — Notes on the Review of G, R. Gray's " Catalogue of the 

 Genera and Subgenera of Birds" in the December Number of 

 the ' Annals: By G. E. Gray, F.L.S. &c. 



In a recent notice of my " Catalogue of the Genera and Subgenera 

 of Birds," published in the * Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History' for December 1855, a number of objections are stated to 

 some of the minor details of that work, which might lead the reader 

 to suppose that its author had been actuated rather by caprice than 

 by principle in the matters referred to, and would therefore give an 

 erroneous impression of the nature of the work, and of its utility to 

 the ornithological student. With the view of guarding the reader 

 from such an impression, I am desirous of putting him in possession 

 of my reasons for adhering to the principles which, after long and 

 anxious consideration, 1 had deliberately adopted, and which twenty 

 years' unremitted attention to the subject has only served to strengthen 

 and confirm. 



Let me observe, in the first place, that no edition of my work was 

 published in 1844, although that date is given to a previous edition 

 of it by the reviewer in several places. As however he mentions 

 this previous edition as containing "upwards of 1 100 distinct types," 

 it is probable that the original edition of 1840, in which that number 

 of generic types is to be found, is the one referred to. The only 

 other edition (the second) previous to the one now noticed, was pub- 

 lished in 1841. 



Passing over the observations on the multiplication of generic 

 names by the same authors for the same generic types, and on bar- 

 barously compounded generic names, with which I have nothing to 

 do but to record them, I come to the first objection taken by the 

 reviewer, in regard to misspelt names. "There seems," he says, 

 " to be no reason whatever why such an error should be retained in 

 perpetuum:' and adds, that " Mr. Gray appears to hold, that right 

 or wrong we are bound to adopt the spelling originally given by the 

 proposer of the genus, and to allow of no corrections or emendations 

 even of faults due to typographical errors only." This is a strong 

 charge, to which I distinctly plead " Not Guilty." I certainly hold 

 no such opinion, and I am not aware of any statement of mine by 

 which the charge can be supported. It is true that in a work des- 

 tined to give, in a concise form, the history of each division, I think 

 myself bound to record even the variations in spelling that may have 

 been used by different authors, or by the same author at different 

 times; and when the reviewer asks "what benefit can we derive" 

 from such a record, I answer without hesitation that, for want of 

 this information, naturalists frequently lose much time, and some- 

 times unavailingly, in their search in indexes and elsewhere for par- 

 ticular names, because the spelling has been varied from that with 

 which they are familiar. In some cases too the etymology may be 

 doubtful, and the proper mode of spelling not easily decided. The 

 introduction of these variations is consequently in my opinion a 

 useful addition to such a work ; and it is moreover justified by the 



