'■■^'.•,.^'-] Reviews. 51 



priority. " Thout;!! admittedly out ol date. I he old classificatioii 

 ot l)irds adojHed a " ([uartei- ol a reiitiiry aj^o " is usi'd, to a\'()id 

 " annoyance." 



In \ie\v ot the \ast cUllerence in nonienclatuie, even in taniily 

 names, one looks lorward with interest to the })ublication of the 

 Australian Check-list. While Sharjx', in his " Handdist," uses 

 the name Colymbida; for the Divers and Loons of the Northern 

 Hemisphere, the A.O.U. Checkdist uses the name Colymbidce 

 ft)r the (irebes and the name Cuviida-. for the Divers.* Again, the 



* " British authors generally iiave usetl Podiccps lor the (irebes, and 

 just as consistently has it been rejected by American writers. The reasons 

 given by the latter can be best understood by a (j notation from a very recent 

 liaper on this subject. Allen {Bull. Amcr. Mus. Nat. Hisi., vol', xxiii., 

 p. 289, 1907) stated : — ' Certain naturalists, more especially the English, 

 have, however, persistently employed Colymhus for tfie Loons and other 

 names for the Grebes, clearly without good reason, possibly following 

 Latham, who, in 1787, proposed Podiccps for the Grebes, an<l adopted 

 Colymhus (Latham nee Linn.) for the lloons ' ; on p. 290 he added: — 

 'Latham's "Genus Ixxi.x. Podiccps (Coly)iihus Linn.)" is a substitute name 

 for Colynilius Linnanis, and consists of what was left of that group after 

 the Loons were removed from it by Brisson. It is, therefore, an exact 

 synonym of the restricted genus Colymbus Brisson of the Check-list. From 

 the modern point of view, Latham had no right to re-introduce, on a later 

 page, the name Colymbus (Genus Ixxxvi. Colymbus Latham) as a new genus 

 for the Loons, after making it a synonym of his own genus Podiccps, to say 

 nothing of Brisson's having separated the Loons from the Grebes as a 

 distinct genus in i 760, or twenty-seven years before. According to modern 

 usage in other similar cases, Podiccps has no standing, being a pure synonym 

 of an earlier genus.' I^pon referring to Latham's work I find that the pre- 

 ceding is obviously a misinterpretation of Latham's action. In the Xth 

 Ed. of the Systcma Natures (p. 135) Linnc included four species under his 

 genus Colymbus (Brisson indepoidcntly introduced Colymbus for the Grebes : 

 he never subdivided a Linnean genus ; he used the same names as Linne, 

 often with different significations, as, for instance, Mcn^us, which he nsecl 

 for the Divers, though Linnc had utilized it for the Mergansers). Linne, in 

 his Xllth Edition of the Systcma Nciturrp, increased the numlicr of species 

 under Colymbus to eleven. 



" Latham was the first writer to sul)divii!e this genus, and iiis method 

 was perfectly legitimate, and, moreover, quite intelligible. He noteil 

 fifteen species, but separated the Linnean genus into three, accepting Uria 

 for the Guillemots, restricting Colymbus to the Divers, and introducing 

 Podiccps for the Grebes. As he worked with the Linnean system, he 

 indicated in brackets the Linnean genus in the few instances where he 

 made improvements. This is clearly seen as, when including Sylvia (p. 287), 

 Pcrdix (p. 290), Numcuius (p. 291), and Phalaropus (p. 294), he noted against 

 each the Linnean equivalents, Motacilla, Tctrao, Scolopax, and Tvinga 

 respectively. But such can by no means be called substitute names, as in 

 each case Latham retained the Linnean names for a restricted portion of 

 the Linnean genus. There can be no appeal whatever from Latham's 

 action, and consequently Podiccps must be used for the Grebes. Latham's 

 division" was endorsed by such non-English ornithologists as Retzius (1800), 

 Bcchstein (1803), Meisner (1804), Koch (1816), Vieillot (1816), Cuvier (1817), 

 Temminck (1820), Lesson (1828), and Kaup (1829), to mention only the 

 first names that come to hand. 



" In 1829 Kaup (Skizz. Entw.-Gesch Nat. Syst.) introduced new generic 

 names as follows : — On p. 35 he retained Podiccps for the P. minor group ; 

 on p. 41 he proposed Dytes for P. cornutus and arcticus ; on p. 44 Pcdrtaithyia 

 for P. subcfistatus ; on p. 49 Proctopus for P. auritus ; and p. 72, Lophaithyia 

 for P. cristatus. Here, again, though the names cannot be accepted with 



