286 



NOTE ON CYPRINA ISLANDICA. 

 }iy Dr. Wm. H. Dall. 



Bead 13th December, 1912. 



On p. 105 of the Proceedings of the Malacological Society's current 

 volume, Mr. E. A. Smith discusses the generic name of the Venus 

 islandica, L., and incidentally points out that the species figured on 

 pi. 301, figs. \a-b, of the Encyclopedie Methodique does not 

 represent that species, as I liad assumed, but was taken from 

 a specimen of Batissa. A comparison shows that Mr. Smitli is quite 

 right in this identification, but I may perhaps be granted a few lines 

 to show that I erred in good company. 



The figure is sufficiently like C. islandica to deceive anyone whose 

 attention is not especially called to the discrepancies, but apart from 

 that, the circumstances whicli chiefly misled me ai'e the facts that 

 Lamarck himself in 1806 ^ and 1818,- Bory St. Vincent in 1827,3 

 and Desliayes in 1835,* all unite in referring these figures to Cyprina 

 islandica. 



That Lamarck in 1799 selected another species as an example of 

 the genus would not oblige us to take it as the type, since Cyclas 

 cornea was not included in the species figured by Bruguiere a year 

 earlier under the name Cyclas, and consequently could not serve as 

 the type, even if it had not had a generic name given to it by Scopoli 

 many years before. 



No one would be better pleased than I if the name Cyprina could 

 be preserved, but I fear that the rules would have to be strained 

 a little to do it. Tlie name of the carp {Cypriniis) is doubtless 

 derived from its popular allocation as the fish of Venus by the ancients. 

 On tlie other hand, the binomiality of Moehring's bird-names* can 

 hardly be maintained as against the properly^ proposed Arctica of 

 Schumacher. 



Again, since Link's use of the name Cyclas is inadmissible and the 

 other forms figured by Bruguiere liad been pre-empted for new genera, 

 it becomes a moot question whether Batissa, Gray, as the last-proposed 

 name for any of tlie group, should not give way to Cyclas; since, if 

 there was anvthing in the group available for a geneiic name after 

 the elimination of Sphceriiim, Cyrena, and Corbicula, it would be 

 entitled to hold the earlier name. 



1 Ann. Mus. Nat. Hist. Paris, vol. vii, p. 420, 1806. 



- Anini. sans Vert., vol. v, p. 557, 1818 (in synonymy). 



•' Tab. Encycl. Meth. Vers., 1827, p. 156. 



'* Anim. sans Vert., ed. Deshayes, vol. vi, p. 290, 1835 (in synonymy). 



■' Moehring's work, Avium Genera, was published in 1752, and therefore, being 

 pre-Linnean, is not admissible in zoology. The Dutch translation, however, 

 icitli additions, by Nozeman & Vosmaer, is dated 1758, the same year as 

 the tenth edition of Linne's Si/stcma Natura;. Consequently the actual 

 generic names proposed by Moehring may be considered as introduced into 

 zoology at that date, and are therefore not again available for use in other 

 branches of zoology, even if they are not adopted by ornithologists. — 

 E. A. Smith. 



