l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 73 



case to a Commissioner who makes a special study of the data and makes his 

 recommendations to the Commission. As in any court of law the case has to be 

 decided upon the evidence available. Appellants can hardly expect that the 

 Commissioners will work up the literature for them though we have done this 

 in several cases. 



I am wondering whether confusion has not arisen in regard to your interpre- 

 tation of Btdimus, 1792. If it be maintained that Bulimus, 1777, is a typographic 

 error would you still maintain that it has status in nomenclature to the effect 

 that it invalidates Bulivins, 1792, or would you maintain that as a typographic 

 error it has no status in nomenclature? In the latter premise it could not invali- 

 date Bulimus, 1792. 



I will go over the data very carefully again in your publications of 1920 and 

 1924. 



Woodward to Stiles : 



You ask for an explicit statement as to my opinion on the status of Bruguiere's 

 Bulimus, 1792, in the event that Bulimus, 1777, should be decided to be a typo- 

 graphical error. I thought I had made it quite clear in my last letter that I 

 regarded Scopoli's " B^ilimiis Adans." as an error of transcription and not as a 

 typographical error, and I further wrote: "As to Bulimus of Bruguiere, 1792, 

 whatever may be said or thought of the " Bulimus Adans." of Scopoli, there is 

 the name printed in 1777 and renewed in 1786; hence by the Rules it cannot be 



used again Bruguiere's Bulimus, therefore goes out as a homonym." 



Of course had the " Bulimus Adans." of Scopoli been a nom. nud. that would 

 have been a different matter : it was not. 



By the way, as a matter of fact, which I had forgotten, Bruguiere's Bulimus 

 was published in the first part of the Ency. method., Vers, i, which appeared 

 in 1789 (see Sherborn & Woodward: Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. 7, vol. 17, 

 P- 579) and not in 1792. 



Your statement as to the method of procedure of the Commission is illumi- 

 nating. It seems that unless the appellant, who is naturally biased, happens to 

 have given a complete statement of facts it is nobody's business to see that a 

 full case is placed before the Commission, who may, therefore, be called upon 

 solemnly to adjudicate on imperfect evidence. 



Letter from Commissioner Frederick Chapman, A. L. S. : 



My conclusions on the evidence and discussion regarding the validity or 

 otherwise of Bulinus Adanson are as follows : 



I. — Bulinus Adanson is pre-Linnean and therefore has no status. 



2. — Bulimus Scopoli may or may not be an error of transcription by that 

 author, for Adanson's name, but is not to be considered since Adanson is pre- 

 Linnean. But Bulimus Scopoli would also go by the board had he not further 

 defined it in 1786. Bulimus Scopoli therefore stands. 



3. — Bulimus of Bruguiere, 1792, goes out as a homonym. 



4. — Bulinus having been ruled out by No. i, cannot be used again for the pul- 

 monate forms related to Isidora, but Oken's name, BuUinus, 18 15 (though ap- 

 parently suggested by Adanson's name), is sufficiently different to be retained, 

 and in this sense has been used by Hedley (Rec. Austr. Mus. 1917, vol. 12, 

 no. i) for the sinistral forms like Physa so common in the Australian region, 

 and which I have shown to belong to the Planorbidae. 



