202 Reply to Mr. Ogilbys 



subdivisions into which it may become necessary to break up 

 that genus." This proposition is founded injustice ; for when 

 a person has denned and named a group, it is unjust to blot 

 out his original name, merely because that group may require 

 further subdivision. It is also founded in convenience ; for it 

 is much more convenient to retain an established term, even 

 though its meaning may require from time to time to be mo- 

 dified and confined within narrower limits, than to discard it 

 altogether, and ad\ppt a new one every time that a limitation 

 in its extent becomes necessary. This rule is now so gene- 

 rally acted upon, that of the Linnean generic terms, there are 

 very few which have been wholly laid aside, though almost 

 the whole of them are now used in a much more limited sense 

 than was applied to them by Linnaeus himself. It was in 

 conformity with this principle that I recommended the term 

 Simia to be retained for the ourang outangs, in lieu of Geof- 

 froy's term Pithecus, a proceeding which, according to Mr. 

 Ogilby, involves the commission of three cardinal sins. "First," 

 says Mr. O. " the word Simia would have been used in a new 

 sense, different from its legitimate acceptation and from the sense 

 which has hitherto attached to it in Zoology." Now if I had 

 proposed to give the name Simia to a genus of Ruminantia, 

 then indeed it might be said that I was using it in a new sense, 

 but I submit, that in applying the term to the ourang outangs, 

 it is not used in a new, but only in a more limited sense than 

 that applied to it by Linnaeus and the ancients. Now with 

 regard to Linnaeus I have shewn above that almost every one 

 of his generic names is now in the same predicament, and 

 therefore that if this be a cardinal sin, it is at least a very pre- 

 valent one. And as for the ancients, their zoological know- 

 ledge was so vague and imperfect, that few naturalists think 

 it necessary to be very exact in applying their names with 

 precision, for the plain reason that it is rarely possible to as- 

 certain the precise species to which these names anciently 

 referred. Of this laxity Mr. O. himself has given us an in- 

 stance in the terms Cebus and Callithrix, both of which 

 names were used by the ancients for African monkeys, but 

 which Mr. O. admits for American genera. Mr. Ogilby's se- 

 cond cardinal sin is that of " captiously altering an established 

 nomenclature without any commensurate advantage." This, 

 I admit, is a great zoological sin, but it was Geoffroy Saint 

 Hilaire, not I, who committed it; for not only had Linnaeus 

 applied to the monkeys the generic term Simia, which Geof- 

 froy ought therefore to have retained for this, the most remark- 

 able and conspicuous group of them, but Erxleben as long 

 ago as 1777, had defined the ourangs as a genus under this 



