28 Occasional Notes. 



species lie intended to indicate. " This," sa} s Seebohni, "is 

 auotlier instance of the folly of still adhering to the law of 

 priority which has done so much mischief to the study of 

 birds." 



Still more ol^jectionable is it to find amongst the changes 

 advocated by Messrs. Hartcrt and Co. the transference of 

 long-established names from one S})ecies to another. Thus 

 the appropriate name Dnisicus, so long a[)[)lied to the song 

 thrush, they suggest should be bestowed on the redwing 

 {Tioxlus iliacus) while the familiar thrush they would rename 

 2\n'dus philomelus clarldi, Hartert ! 



Now if any reader will take the trouble to refer to the 

 twelfth edition of Linnceus's ' Systema/ 176G — the stai ting 

 point fixed fixed for nomenclature by the committees of the 

 British Association and the British Ornithologists' Union — ■ 

 and read the diagnoses given by Linnseus of the two species 

 named by him iliacus and miisicvs (vol. i., p. 292), it will be 

 perfectly clear that the former bird, ^' alis siibtas ferrugineis, 

 superciliis albicantibus,^' is the redwing; the latter, remigihus 

 hasl interiore ferrugineis, which " dwells in the woods, makes 

 a, nest with mud, and sings in the evening from the summit 

 of a tree/' is evidently the song thrush. Why then transpose 

 these two names after a hundred and fifty years of universal 

 approval ? Apparently because they had been inadvertently 

 so transposed in an earlier edition of the woik, 1758. But 

 Linnpeus, liavino- rectified the mistake in the last edition 

 published in his lifetime, 17GG, should surely be given credit 

 for the correction. We have here an example of the trans- 

 ference of a name from one species to another. Let us now 

 look at the case of transferring the names of genera. 



Messrs Hartert and Co. place the grebes in the genus 

 Colgmhus, and remove the divers from Colymlus to Gavia ! 

 The sandpipers are hopelessly confused by throwing two 

 readily distinguishable genera [Tringa and Totanus) into one 

 genus, Tringa, and transferring one of them, Tringa alpina, 

 together with the smaller stints {minuta, temminckii, &c.) 

 into a different genus, Erolia. 



