608 NOTE ON THE GENUS SPHEROIDES. 



difficult to draw a lino between such as should be adopted and those 

 that ought to be rejected. President Jordan accepts all the bad work 

 of the old naturalists, provided that we can know what species they 

 had in view. I have been hitherto more conservative, and have gen- 

 erally refused to take cognizance of such genera as " Spheroides" and 

 analogous ones (e. g., Tetroras, Mmopterus, etc.), but am now inclined 

 to think that the less exceptions are made to the rules of nomenclature 

 the sooner we may have some agreement. In this case I am further 

 influenced to accept the name Spheroides, inasmuch as, if we reject that, 

 the vista of equally bad work and worse names lies before us. 



But later President Jordan discovered that Orbidus was substituted 

 by Rafiuesque for u the French name 'Les Spheroides'" in 1815, while 

 the " Latin form Sphceroides was not applied uutil 1831" by Pillot. He 

 therefore took up the name Orbidus instead of Sphceroides in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the U. S. National Museum (v. 10, p. 481) and in "A Man- 

 ual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States" (5th ed., 

 p. 170). 



It may be fairly questioned whether a name derived directly from 

 the Greek or Latin and coined especially for a given genus should not 

 be accepted as a Latin name, even if it has a French article before it 

 and French accents. But in the case at issue we are not called upon 

 to consider this question. A u Latin" name was soon supplied in an 

 unequivocal manner. 



In 1800 A. M. C. Dumeril published his "Zoologie Analytique," and 

 therein he adopted the genus Spheroides. In the text (p. 10S) he used 

 the word with the French accent (Les Spheroides or Spheroide), but 

 the index is divided into two parts, one ("table Fraueaise'') containing 

 the French names, and the other (" table Latine") the Latin names, and 

 in the latter part (p. 342) we find the name Spheroides given as a Latin 

 name, while in the former part (p. 328) it appears under the guise of ; 

 Spheroide. According to President Jordan's views, therefore, " Sphe- 

 roides v should be attributed to Dumeril, take the date of 1800, and 

 thus take priority of the name Orbidus given as a substitute in 1815.* 



* The generic names originally given in French by Lacepede were Latinized by 

 Dumeril in Ins "Zoologie Analytique" in 1806, and thus the question whether thai 

 names derived directly from Greek, but used only in a French form, should be ex- 

 cluded need not be considered in his case. 



