Vol. X] General Notes. 369 



1893 J 



Breeding of the Rough-winged Swallow at Shelter Island, New 

 York.— While collecting with Mr. W. W. Worthington of Shelter Island, 

 N. Y., June 3, 1893, I found a nest of the Rough-winged Swallow contain- 

 ing four much incubated eggs. The nest was placed in a bank about forty 

 feet high, on the shore; it looked like an old Bank Swallow's burrow. It 

 was two feet from the top of the bank and twenty-seven inches deep. The 

 chamber the nest was in was twelve inches in diameter, and was completely 

 filled with dried sea grasses on which the eggs were laid. 



I shot the female, and as it fell in the water the male came up and tried 

 to help its disabled mate, at the same time uttering a most plaintive cry.— 

 Harry B. Sargent, Ne-w York City. 



Ccereba versus Certhiola.— In a recent number of 'The Ibis' (April, 

 1S93, PP- 2 4 6 > 2 -l7) Mr - Sclater takes American ornithologists to task for 

 having "recently caused needless confusion by proposing to reject the 

 long-recognizecrname Certhiola of Sundevall [1835], and to use in its 

 place Ccereba of Vieillot [1S07], a term always hitherto applied to a different 

 o-enus." Mr. Sclater, to make his point, claims that Ccereba Vieillot "was 

 intended as a Latin equivalent for the 'Guit-Guit* of Buffon ; and the 

 '-Guit-Guit' of Buffon was primarily the South American species usually 

 called Ccereba cyanea," etc. While it is true that Vieillot evidently 

 intended to include other species in the genus Ccereba, the fact remains 

 that he definitely mentioned at this time only one species, "Le Guit-guit 

 sucrier, Ccereba flaveola." This then, by all rules of nomenclature touching 

 the restriction of genera, must be the type of the genus Ctvreba, and con- 

 sequently Sundevall had no right, nearly thirty years later, to make 

 Ccereba flaveola the type of a new genus Certhiola. It makes no difference 

 that Vieillot later placed other species in the genus Ccvreba; at the time 

 Ccereba was established C. flaveola was the only species so referred, and 

 becomes therefore necessarily the type of the genus. Whatever we may 

 imagine to have been his "intentions," we have to be governed by what he 

 actually did. Hence the synonymy of the genus stands as follows : 



Ccereba Vieillot, Ois. Am. Sept., II, 1807, p. 70. Type and only species, 

 C. flaveola = Certhia flaveola Linn. 



Certhiola Sundevall", CEfvers. Vet.-Ak. Handl. 1835, p. 99- T )T e C - 

 fla veola . 



Mr. Sclater (Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus., XI, p. 31) gives "C. cyanea" as the 

 type of Vieillot's genus Ca-reba, as follows : 



"Ccereba Vieill., Ois. Am. Sept. ii, p. 70 (1807). . . . Type, C. cyanea." 

 We have thus the incongruity of a species given as the type of genus 

 which was not placed in that genus till some years after the genus was 

 originally established ! In fact, as I have previously stated (Auk, VIII, 

 p. 95), it proves unsafe to take as types of genera the species explicitly 

 stated to be such in the various volumes of the British Museum 'Catalogue 

 of Birds,' since it sometimes turns out that some other species is in reality 

 the type. 

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