Vol. XXV, pp. 185-188 December 24, 1912 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



GENERAL NOTES. 



A NEW NAME FOR TAN AGRA SCLATERI BERLEPSCH. 



Dr. ('. W. Richmond (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mas., 35, No. 1656, Dec. 16, 

 L908, 644) lias shown that Tanagra Linnaeus can not ho used for the 

 birds that have usually been placed in this genus, but that Thraupis 

 Boie will have to be used. He lixes the type of Tanagra upon Fringilla 

 riolacea Linn., therefore Tanagra sclaterl Berlepsch (Ibis, 1880, 112) be- 

 comes untenable on account of Tanagra sclaterl ( Euphonia sclaterl Sun- 

 devall, Oefv. Vet. Ak. Forh. Stockh., 1869, 596), and the bird described 

 by von Berlepsch under the above name may be called Thraupis epis= 

 copus nesophilus. — /. H. Riley. 



THE NAMES OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOATS. 



The specific name montanus, applied to the Rocky Mountain Goat 

 (Ovis montanus Ord, 1815), is preoccupied by Oris montana Schreber, 

 Die Saugthiere, plate 294 D, published, according to Sherborn (P. Z. S., 

 1891, p. 587), in 1804; and by Ovis montana Tiedemann, Zoologie, I, p. 

 404, 1808, both synonyms of Ovis canadensis Shaw and Ovis cervina Des- 

 marest, 1804. The earliest available name for the Mountain Goat is 

 R uplcapra americana Blainville, 1816. Though described from "North 

 America," it may properly be restricted to the first recognized form, long 

 known as Oreamnos montanus, inhabiting the Cascade Mountains, and 

 the nearby ranges. Blainville, in his preliminary arrangement of the 

 ungulates, divided his comprehensive genus Cerophorus into what he 

 called sub-genera, of which Rupicapra, with three species, including "A. 

 americana"* is one; but in his diagnoses of new species which follows 

 he first characterized the goat under the combination Rupicapra ameri- 

 cana. 



The name applied to one of the two suhspecies of Oreamnos montanus 

 described by Dr. J. A. Allen in 1004, 0. m. columbianus (Bull. Amer. 

 Mus. Nat. Hist., XX, p. 20), is preoccupied by the Capra columbiana of 

 Desmoulins, 1823, a synonym of Ovis montanus Ord. On my calling Dr. 



* Not Antilope americana Ord, as stated by Palmer, Index Gen. Mamm., p. 613; but 

 a tinmen nudum, really referring to the animal he later diagnosed under the name 

 Rupicapra americana, the Rocky Mountain Goat. 



30— Pkoc. Biol. Soc. Wash.. Vol. XXV, 1912. (185) 



