GENERIC NAMES OF THE FAMILY STAPHYLINIDAE 31 



generic names. This problem is discussed in the general Introduction 

 above. The determination of the genotype of a genus can be made 

 solely by examination of the original work (in some cases) or the 

 original and all subsequent works (in other cases). It is often a diffi- 

 cult problem and should not be made more difficult by injection of 

 opinions on what the designator may have thought, what specimens 

 he may have examined, or what other works he may have been in- 

 fluenced by. 



C. During the past 25 years there has been an increasing tendency 

 to accept as validly published generic names which were accompanied 

 only by lists of species. It has been recognized that these lists actually 

 give a better understanding of the author's concept of the genus than 

 many a poor description. This acceptance was given a great impetus 

 in 1928 by the adoption by the International Congress of Zoology at 

 Budapest of an amendment to Article 25 of the Rules which specifically 

 made it impossible after 1930 to establish a new genus on a list of 

 species alone, unless a genotype was designated. This strengthened 

 the view that in the case of writers before 1931 such establishment was 

 possible. Accordingly names proposed in such works as the catalogs 

 of Dejean have found wide acceptance in recent works. 



It was therefore exceedingly unfortunate that in the republishing 

 of Opinion 1 of the International Commission, there were appended 

 some unofficial notes by Francis Hemming stating that these generic 

 names can be accepted only if accompanied by a single species (amount- 

 ing to a type fixation). This view has been strongly opposed, and at 

 best it is merely a personal opinion. Tottenham has chosen to follow 

 it but has added a special interpretation of what "inclusion of but a 

 single species" means. If a catalog generic name was published over 

 ti list of three previously published species, Tottenham labels the genus 

 monobasic if he considers that the three are conspecific. He cites the 

 (monobasic) type by the oldest available name for this species — per- 

 haps a name different from any of the three. 



D. There are a good many names which were originally proposed 

 for groups of species that had been included by earlier authors erro- 

 neously in still earlier genera. These are new genera, because the 

 group of species has not previously been named. It is not uncommon 

 to label these as new names — replacement names for the misapplication 

 of the older name. For example, Gotysops Tottenham, 1939, new name 

 for Hesperophilus Thomson, 1859 (not Curtis, 1829). This is very 

 misleading, for it implies that Gotysops is an objective synonym of 

 Hesperophilus Thomson, which is a junior homonym of Hesperophilus 

 Curtis. It implies further that the genotype of Gotysops will probably 

 be determined by a prior fixation for Hesperophilus Thomson. How- 

 ever, Thomson did not propose any name Hesperophilus. He merely 

 assigned to Hesperophilus Curtis some species that Tottenham does 



