EXCURSUS ON THE NAMES OF SHRIKES 537 



Of the genus as restricted to include only the species that 

 conform to the foregoing diagnosis, there are about nine well- 

 determined species, inhabiting Europe, Asia, Africa, and 

 North America. 



§ 1. — On the Use and Meaning of Shrikes' Names 



It is a very nice question, What is the proper name of this 

 genus under the current rules of nomenclature ? The answer 

 depends upon two important points, neither of which has been 

 definitely determined. One of these points is, the date to which 

 we may be permitted to go back to find a tenable generic name; 

 the other is, by what method we may discover the type of a 

 Linnaean genus when, as in the present case, it covers more than 

 one Linnaean species. The present instance may be made to 

 furnish an important precedent, as it certainly answers all the 

 requirements of a test case. 



George Robert Gray, who paid great attention to loosing 

 synonymatic knots according to certain consistent, if not the 

 most judicious, rules, adopts the name Collyrio, Moehring, 1752, 

 and his example was followed by Baird in 1858. He goes back 

 for genera to 1735, the date of the first edition of the Systema 

 Naturae, taking any applicable name he finds, of date 1735 or 

 later. As Linnaeus named no genus of Shrikes until the 10th 

 edition of his System, 1758, Moehring's term Collyrio, 1752, 

 clearly has priority. 



The exceptions which most ornithologists, myself among the 

 number, would take to this course, are several. In the first 

 place, we are not to go back of the date of establishment of the 

 binomial nomenclature for any names, whether generic or 

 specific. Though the Linnaean rules were first definitely 

 promulgated in the Philosophia Botanica, published in 1751, 

 the first instance of the consistent use of the nomen trlviale, or 

 the second term of the binomial nomenclature, is in the 

 Linnaean Species Plantarum, 1753, which the botanists gen- 

 erally concur in adopting as their starting-point; but the bino- 

 mial nomenclature was not consistently applied by Linnaeus to 

 zoology until the 10th edition ot the Systema Naturae, 1758. G. 

 E. Gray himself does not go behind this edition for his specific 

 names ; and most ornithologists are unwilling to go back of the 

 12th edition, 17CG, for any names whatever, with one special 

 exception, in favor of Brisson's genera. It is urgently required 



