THE CANADIAN KNTOMOLOGIST. 45T 



•'MEIGEN'S FIRST PAPER ON DIPTERA." 



BY D. W. COQUILLETT, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



In attempting to settle the status of names aftecting the nomenclature 

 of any class of animals or plants, unless this is done in an impartial manner 

 the reader will be unable to form an unbiased opinion from the statements 

 set forth. The present remarks are called forth by a perusal of the article 

 under the above caption, which appeared in the Canadian Entomologist 

 for October, pages 370 to 373. 



No student who has seen Meigen's paper of 1800, or Mr. HendeTs 

 reproduction of it, can truthfully say that the author has not complied 

 with tlie rules adopted by the International Zoological Congress. There 

 is, first, the name of the proposed new genus in proper Latin form, then 

 a description of the genus, followed by a statement of the number of 

 species known to the author as belonging to the genus. The author, 

 therefore, had a correct idea of binomial nomenclature, and, so far as he 

 went, he applied it in this paper. That a genus can be fotmded without, 

 being accompanied by the name of any species, is allowable under Article 

 2 of the International Code, which holds that "The scientific designation 

 of animals is uninominal for subgenera and all higher groups." It has not 

 infrequently happened that an author has founded a genus in one number 

 of some journal without any mention of species, but has treated the species- 

 in a subsequent number, and students have almost universally taken the 

 first date as the real date of the geniis, a view held to be correct by the 

 Code. The case of Meigen's generic names is similar to this, the difference 

 being that before treating of the species (in 1S04) he published a second 

 paper on genera (1803), changing several of the names given in his 

 previous (i8co) paper. In a few cases such changes were allowable on 

 the score of preoccupation, but in the other instances the changes were 

 unjustified, and therefore the old names must be restored under Article 25 

 of the Code — the well-known law of priority. 



As to the contention that these old genera of Meigen are invalid ork 

 the score of having no type species, ^Ru)e 7 under Article 30 -of the Code 

 covers this point: "In case a generic name without designated type is- 

 proposed as a substitute for another generic name. With or without type,, 

 the type of either, when established, becomes ipso facto the type.of the 

 other." On this principle, the type species of any one of Meigen's genera - 

 of 1S03 is the type of his corresponding genus of 1800. Among the 

 generic names of 1803, no less than twenty were also unaccompanied b^ 

 the name of a species, yet these very generic names, with few exceptions, 

 are now in cur;ent use. 



December, igo8 



