1890] Recetit Literature. 



73 



should hence take their date and authority from Gray, and not from their 

 prior use in a vernacular sense by the French authors. 



Variations in orthography, due to emendations or to typographical 

 errors, are quite freely given, but by no means exhaustively; thus in such 

 striking cases as Sayornis and Sayiornts, Pedioccetes and Pedicecetes, not 

 infrequently only the original form is cited, while in the case of Poocce- 

 tes and Pocecetes, both forms are given.* 



As a whole Mr. Waterhouse's 'Index' is a work of great merit, involving 

 an immense amount of patient, painstaking, arduous labor, for which 

 systematic ornithologists the world over will be truly grateful. — J. A. A. 



Blanchard on the Nomenclature of Organized Beings. f — This 'Report' 

 is more general in its scope than the 'Code of Nomenclature' of the 

 American Ornithologists' Union, dealing as it does with Botany and Pa- 

 laeontology as well as with living animals, and hence has to confront 

 questions arising from the peculiar conditions met with among the lower 

 forms of animal life (where larval forms have been made the basis of 

 species and genera, and in Palaeontology, where species and genera have 

 been based on parts of an organism), which the A. O. U. Committee 

 were not especially called upon to consider. It is pleasant to find, how- 

 ever, the present report in nearly complete harmony with the rulings of 

 the A. O. U. Committee, as regards not only leading principles but in 

 special cases, where the ground covered is the same. 



The chief points of difference from the A. O. U. 'Code' relate to 

 the starting point for the beginning of the binomial system, and the 

 matter of emendation of names. As to the first, the ' Report' takes the 

 tenth (1758) edition of Linnaeus's ' Systema Naturas ' as the real starting 

 point (as does also the A. O. U. ' Code ') but makes reservations in favor 

 of (1) Tournefort (Botany, 1700; Mollusks, 1742), (2) Lang (Mollusks, 

 1752), (3) K1 ein (Mollusks, 1753), (4) Clerck (Spiders, 1757), and (5) 

 Adanson (Mollusks, 1757), the works of these authors conforming strictly 

 to the binomial system. The action of the ' Law of Priority' is thus not 

 strictly limited in point of time, but by the following conditions: "Ar- 

 ticle XI. Le nom attribue" a chaque Genre et a chaque Espece ne peut 6tre 

 que celui sous lequel ils ont ete le plus anciennement designes, a la condi- 

 tion : a. — Que ce nom ait ete divulgue dans une publication 011 il aura ete 

 clairement et suffisamment defini ; b. — Que l'auleur ait effectivement 

 entendu appliquer les regies de la nomenclature binaire." 



In discussing the 'Law of Priority' Dr. Blanchard revives and empha- 

 sizes the strictures made by M. Chaper in his report on the same subject! 



* Singularly, however, the change of Pooccetes to Pocecetes, is ascribed to Sharpe, 

 1888, though made by Coues some ten years earlier. 



fDe la Nomenclature des etres organises. Rapport presente au Congres Inter- 

 national de Zoologie par le Dr. Raphael Blanchard, Professeur-Agrege a la Faculte de 

 Medicine de Paris, Secretaire general de la Societe Zoologique de France.> Congres 

 International de Zoologie, Paris, 1889. Rapports presentes au Congres Interna- 

 tional de Zoologie. July, 1889, pp. 87--157. 



I De la nomenclature des etres organises. 8vo, pp. 37, 1881. 



