676 On the Generic Name of the Finless-backed Porpoise. 
view, however, of the considerable variations in colour in this 
genus, and the alteration of characters due to age, I am not 
at present prepared to admit more than a single species as 
occurring in the Saruwaged Mountains. One of the adults, 
No. 4, has its fur profusely mixed with greyish white 
anteriorly, while No. 12 has no grey at all, and the general 
colour is far more rufous. Much more material is needed 
before any sound opinion on the number of species can be 
arrived at, 
LXXXIII. — The Generic Name of the Finless-backed 
Porpoise, formerly known as Neomeris phocenoides. By 
OLDFIELD THOMAS. 
(Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 
THE question of the proper treatment of misprints in generic 
names is one that bristles with difficulties, and needs most 
careful consideration in every case. Sometimes, when the 
misprinted name has been used in a perfectly valid form, it 
would seem that we ought to recognize it as having full 
status, in spite of its being obviously or presumably a mis- 
print. This was the course I followed in renaming the 
Dryomys of 1906, because of the accidental use of that name 
(asa misprint for Drymomys) by Philippi six years before, and 
it has received the approval of later writers. When, however, 
the misprint is not, viewed simply by itself, strictly valid, for 
want of diagnosis or identifiable type-species, the name should 
be considered as having no status at all. This would, for 
instance, apply to Wallace’s Neotomys of 1876, which ante- 
dates, but does not invalidate, my Neotomys of 1894. 
Now, this question of misprints arises in the case of the 
Porpoise to which Gray applied the generic name of Neomeris, 
for that word proved to be invalid owing to its having been 
used earlier for an invertebrate, and in dealing with it Palmer, 
when preparing his great work on nomenclature, replaced it 
by Neophocena, after quoting two other names which he set 
aside as misprints. His notice of Neomerts, abbreviated, is as 
follows (exact references are given in his ‘Index Generum 
Mammalium,’ p. 453, 1904) :— 
Neomeris, Gray, 1846, nec Lamouroux, 1816. 
Meomeris, Gray, 1847. 
Nomeris, Coues, 1890, and, finally, 
Neophocena, Palmer, 1899. 
