Todd : A Revision of mi Genus ChjEmepelia. 515 



LeptOpelia Urine and Reichenow, lS()o, is merely .1 new name for 

 Talpacotia Bonaparte, proposed on grounds of purism. 



Very recently Dr. J. A. Allen lias sought to revive Columbina of 

 Spix for the present group, on the ground thai Gray in 1840 desig- 

 nated Columba passerina as its type, thus fixing the name. But 

 inasmuch as this specific name, as such, does not appear as one of the 

 originally included species, 1 > 1 1 1 under the guise instead of Columbina 

 griseola, which is now known to he a subspecies of ('. passerina, 

 Dr. Allen's position has been called in question. The matter was 

 formally referred by the American Ornithologists' Union Nomen- 

 clature Committee to the International Commission on Zoological 

 Nomenclature, and the decision of that body, recently published, is 

 to the effect that Gray's designation of a type for Columbina in 1840 

 was invalid, and that the type remained to be fixed. Previously to 

 the publication of this decision, but evidently with a knowledge of its 

 contents, Dr. Allen proceeded to formally fix the type of Columbina 

 as Columbina griseola (= Columbina passerina griseola [Spix]). It 

 would seem, however, as if the Commission, in deciding that Gray's 

 first designation of a type for Columbina was invalid, had overlooked 

 the fact that a year later he designated types for both Columbina and 

 Chcemepelia {Columbina strepitans and Columba passerina respectively) 

 — designations which are open to no such objections as invalidated 

 his original action. Hence I )r. Allen's latest formal fixing of the 

 is quite superfluous, and it is therefore possible to conserve 

 Chamepelia for this generic group, while Columbina will replace 

 Columbula Bonaparte, 1854. 



The orthography of the name has given rise to endless trouble. 

 Swainson originally wrote the word " Chcemepelia' 1 '' — an obvious slip 

 for " Chanicepei-ic," compounded from \afjuai and nlXtui. Ten years 

 later, in his Classification of Birds, he unfortunately repeated the 

 error, but discovered it in time to correct it in the index. 3 Later 

 authors have also been more or less unfortunate in their use of the 

 word, and compositors and proof-readers have occasionally added to 

 the confusion, as will be evident from the table of synonymy of the 

 genus, wherein the word is spelled in no less than eighteen different 



3 The writer takes this opportunity of expressing his lack of sympathy with any 

 code of nomenclature which makes no provision for the correction of such a pal- 

 pably absurd error as this, but instead carefully provides for its perpetuation, on 

 the ground that science is not literature. But if science must appropriate the tools 

 of literature, why not at least use them in the right way? 



