234 Notes and News. [a^"^ 



notej. In London Stephens had access to it and adopted several of Vieil- 

 lot's names pubHshing them in his continuation of Shaw's 'General Zool- 

 ogy' (Vol. IX, pts. 1 & 2) which probably appeared in the first half of 1816, 

 as it is noticed in the ' British Review ' for August, 1816, as one of the new 

 books from the period April 10 to July 10, of that year. This presents a 

 nice question of priority but it would appear as if VieiUot deserved the 

 benefit of the doubt ! 



Vieillot's ability as a systematic ornithologist seems not to have been 

 appreciated by his contemporaries and he was apparently treated very 

 unfairly. Correspondence between ornithologists of his time would no 

 doubt reveal some very interesting side lights upon this matter! 



Vieillot's Analyse was the expression of a more or less widespread desire 

 for more generic groups than were provided in the systems of Linnseus and 

 Brisson. Additional genera had of course been proposed since their time 

 but they were scattered here and there and most of them were for new 

 species rather than for segregates of the old genera. 



Bonnaterre in his volume of the 'Encyclopedic Methodique' (1790); 

 Lac6pede in his 'Tableau' (1799) and Daudin in his 'Traite E16mentaire' 

 (1800) made attempts in this direction, but the first and last of these works 

 were never completed while the second was never followed by a fuller treat- 

 ment such as -the author evidently intended; so that the field lay open for 

 VieiUot and he took advantage of it, though the conservatives evidently 

 did what they could to discourage him, and not until years after his death 

 was his work appreciated at its full value. Curiously enough the eccentric 

 Rafinesque came near depriving him of his glory as he likewise produced 

 an 'Analyse' in 1815 in which a number of substitute names are suggested 

 for existing genera and 138 new names are proposed! These latter however, 

 are unaccompanied by diagnoses or specific examples so that they fall as 

 nomina nuda and it is impossible to tell for what birds they were intended. 



Another publication of 1816 is a curious 'Systematic Catalogue of In- 

 digenous Mammals and Birds in the British Museum' by W. E. Leach 

 printed on one side of the leaves in the form of labels. The several new 

 names that occur here have been pretty generally rejected today as nomina 

 nuda but the book is in any case an interesting curiosity and a great rarity. 

 Both it and Vieillot's ' Analyse ' were reprinted by the Willoughby Society. 

 The introduction to the Leach reprint, by the way, fails to mention among 

 the known copies of the original one in the library of the Philadelphia 

 Academy. 



On January 22, Mr. C. William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society 

 sailed for Demarara to establish a tropical zoological station for the study 

 of the evolution of birds and the life histories of important South American 

 species. Incidentally large numbers of living vertebrates will be secured 

 and shipped to New York for exhibition in the Zoological Park. Mr. 

 Beebe is accompanied by Messrs. G. Inness Hartley, Paul G. Howes and 

 Donald Carter. 



