Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 319 



been previously employed in 1810 for a bird-genus, in 1816 

 for Lepidoptera, in 1831 for a fish. In Dr. Sbarpe's Cata- 

 logue the name should^ therefore, be supplanted by the next 

 available synonym, Microtarsns, a genus founded by Eyton 

 in 1839, -with 31. melanoleucus of Malacca as type. Whether 

 this species is the same as Micropus melanoleucus (Gray), 

 mentioned by Swainson two years earlier, /. c, I have been 

 unable to ascertain. 



As a Swift, Micropus was carefully defined, with a figure 

 of the head and foot, by Meyer and Wolf in 1810 (Taschenb. 

 deutsch. Vogelk. i. p. 280). This appears to be the first 

 occurrence of the name in zoology. In 1824 it was rejected, as 

 Dr. Stejneger has pointed out (Auk, i. 1884, pp. 229, 230), by 

 one of the authors of it, B. Meyer himself, on account of its 

 being preoccupied in botany (Linn. S. N. 1766, ii. p. 580), 

 and Brachypus was proposed by him in its stead, but in 

 1811 the genus had received the name Cijpselus from lUiger. 

 This name has been generally accepted, though Micropus was 

 not entirely overlooked by the past generation of ornitholo- 

 gists, having been mentioned as a synonym by Lesson, Nau- 

 mann, Bonaparte, and no doubt by many others. Dr. Stejneger 

 has convinced a good many ornithologists that the name 

 Micropus should be reinstated: we have "either to accept or 

 reject all the names preoccupied in botany,^' and he finds that 

 the actual condition of nomenclature shows that the former 

 course would involve the lesser evil. But, by Bule 10 of 

 the Stricklandian Code, the name Micropus, having been 

 previously used for a plant-genus, is to be rejected. It is 

 in such cases as this that we feel the want of a Code of 

 Bules by which we could regulate nomenclature once for all 

 up to a certain stage in the progress of zoology, be they 

 Strickland's or anybody else's, and whether the stage 

 selected be from Linnseus's xiith ed., 1766, to the ' Strick- 

 landian Code,' 1842, or the century from Linnseus's 

 xth ed., 1759, to Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' 1859, 

 when a new era in the conception of species commenced. 

 Unhappily, though all are interested in nomenclature, few 

 of those who, from their high scientific position, might be 



