368 CHAPTER OF CRITICISM. 



place, whether he has ever read or seen Cuvier's Regne Animal ; and secondly, 

 whether Caryocatactes nucifraga occurs therein, as Mr. Sweeiing has boldly- 

 stated. I perceive that the Editor asks the same question ; but Mr. Wood is 

 wrong in stating that Nilsson, in the Ornithologia Suecica, is the only author 

 who has used the name,* as I proposed it some time since in The Naturalist, 

 and had at that time never heard of Nilsson. Mr. Sweeting makes rather a 

 confused statement in his paper on the British Falconidce. I had laid down as 

 a rule, that generic names should invariably be of Greek, and specific names 

 always of Latin origin. But Mr. Sweeting says, that " the practice of using 

 Greek words for generic, and Latin for specific names of birds and other animals" 

 did not originate with me, but was the invariable plan, wherever admissible, of 

 Cuvier. Now I must beg of Mr. Sweeting to give me the chapter and page 

 wherein Cuvier has laid down this as a rule. Until he can do this I think his 

 instancing three birds with which such a rule (?) has been acted upon will have 

 very little weight in proof of his assertion. I may here mention, by the way, 

 that one of these names (Pernis) Mr. Sweeting did not know to be of Greek 

 derivation till I pointed out its origin to him. 



" Whenever admissible" ! May I ask, was it not the result of my arguments 

 that it should always and invariably be admissible ? I doubt, however, very 

 much whether Cuvier had any plan whatever of the sort. It should be a very 

 long series, consisting of several thousand names (instead of three, or rather two 

 and a half, as I have shown above), to lead us to the conclusion that he had 

 any such plan, in the absence of all declaration of having any plan of the kind, 

 which, if he had indeed made, I must again beg of Mr. Sweeting to point out 

 when and where. Meantime I shall assert the correctness of my former state- 

 ment in my treatise on scientific nomenclature in The Naturalist, that my 

 laying down such a rule as a rule (and without exception too), was the first time 

 that such had been done, as it had " been before (but obscurely and faintly) 

 acted on." 



I do not understand Mr. Sweeting's following sentence ; do you, Mr. Editor ? 

 " Classical names for birds, whether Greek or Latin, or Latin and Greek, ought, 

 if truly appropriate, to be considered equally admissible." Does he mean to set 

 this up against what he before (though erroneously) stated to have been the 

 *'• invariable plan, whenever admissible, of the illustrious Baron Cuvier ?" But 

 if so— rif both are equally admissible, how comes he in the very next sentence to 

 say, that " where both languages are employed to designate species, I am quite 



* We stated that Nilsson was the only author, so far as we were aware, who employed it, in 

 alluding, moreover, rather to separate works than to memoirs or papers published in Transactions, 

 periodicals, &c— Ed. 



