Change in Name o/Gracula pectoralis. 17 



and wings wanting, and the head much injured; yet his descrip- 

 tion is recognizable if we allow for the absence of the wings. 

 His name, however, is very faulty, as black is the colour of fully 

 two-thirds of the perfect bird, the yellow appearing only as a 

 band round the body and a patch on the rump and vent : luteo- 

 cinctus would therefore have been appropriate ; nigrocinctus is a 

 complete misnomer ; and, in fact, it was that very name which 

 prevented me from inquiring further about the bird, which I 

 had long seen included in Dr. Sclater's list of New-Guinea 

 birds. 



The question, then, is, Shall a name, given to a mutilated 

 skin, and which is erroneous and inapplicable as regards the 

 perfect bird, be perpetuated by the law of priority? Many 

 naturalists are now of opinion that where a description is pal- 

 pably incorrect or insufficient to distinguish a species among its 

 allies, or when a name is plainly inapplicable to the species to 

 which it has been applied, such names and descriptions should 

 be passed over as altogether void; for it is evidently more to 

 the interest of our science that the inquirer should be at once 

 referred to a good description, which will settle his doubts, than 

 to an imperfect or incorrect one, which must only increase his 

 difficulties. A general conflagration of every work describing 

 species, published more than fifty years back, would be an un- 

 mixed blessing to zoology. 



In this case we have, first, a name and description of a made-up 

 specimen, of which probably one-fifth part only is genuine, and, 

 secondly, a specimen confessedly mutilated in its most important 

 parts, and the name given to which is inapplicable to the entire 

 bird ; and in both cases the absence of the legs and wings has 

 led to the species being placed in a wrong genus. I now leave 

 ornithologists to decide, in the interest of science, by what name 

 this bird shall be called ; and I would further beg to suggest, as 

 a useful and necessary supplement to the law of priority, that it 

 be decreed that where the first description of a species is abso- 

 lutely insufficient to determine the same, and a new name has, 

 owing to such insufficiency, been given to the species, with a good 

 and sufficient description attached, such new name shall be for 

 ever retained, notwithstanding at any future time the former name 

 may be proved to have been applied to the same species. 

 I remain, Gentlemen, 



Your most obedient Servant, 



Alfred R. Wallace. 



Ann. §• Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. xi. 



