Miscellaneous. 499 
the paper (of M. du Chaillu), with some details, under the name of 
Cynogale velox, quite sufficiently, especially when one has the type 
specimen to confirm the description, to establish the specific name 
of velox.’ Although this may appear, at first sight, a contradiction of 
the previous passage, it is not so in reality, as in the first Dr. Gray 
argnes on the assumption of the possible loss of the type specimen, 
and in the second this specimen is admitted as an essential item in 
the consideration of the matter. Ifthe description, with the addition 
of the type specimen, be sufficient to establish the fact that the ani- 
mal is swift, and therefore to justify the specific velox, that descrip- 
tion with the type specimen was alike sufficient to establish the fact 
that it was a river-animal, and therefore to justify the generic 
Potamogale; for if a mys be admitted as a generic name for 
a carnivorous animal, a gale cannot be rejected for a suspected 
Rodent. Dr. Gray draws a line of distinction between the part of 
Du Chaillu’s description referring to the species and that referring 
to the genus. I need not quote the passage again in which Du 
Chaillu justifies his proposal of the genus Potamogale: however 
unfortunate his comparison with Cynogale may have been, it im- 
_ plied at least that it was a carnivorous mammal; and he appealed to 
the shape and proportion of the tail and its West-African habitat. 
Surely, many a generic name proposed and adopted by naturalists 
has been introduced into the system with less accurate elements of a 
generic diagnosis! Look, on the other hand, at his detailed descrip- 
tion of the species Cynogale velox: it contains all those errors 
pointed out by Dr. Gray; nay, it is even perfectly insufficient as a 
specific description, such descriptions requiring considerable detail to 
ensure the distinction of a species from its congeners. If the type 
specimen had been lost, a succeeding naturalist, who might have re- 
cognized the genus Potamogale, would still have been at a loss to 
know whether he had to deal with the same species or not. And 
yet, although the chances of a recognition would have been more in 
favour of the generic than of the specific name, Dr. Gray prefers 
to use his advantage of having the type specimen for confirming the 
description and name of the species, rather than that of the genus. 
It was for these reasons that I stated my opinion that if one name 
be adopted, the other cannot be rejected ; and for these same reasons 
I now state that the generic name has (ou the merits of the original 
description alone) a better right to be adopted than the specific. 
If zoologists should ever wnite in the proposed revision of the 
“rules of zoological nomenclature,” I shall not regret having been 
forced to this discussion, which may induce them to give a share of 
their attention to cases like the present. 
