1922.] Letter fi, Extracts, and Notes. 391 



'The Ibis' was good enough to publish a letter of mineon 

 the fallacy of absolute bed-rock priority instead of in some 

 cases an authoritative name *, ]\Iay I venture to follow on 

 ■with the " pre-occupied " name, so-called, or Article 36. This 

 is a mischievous rule. 



That a pre-occupied name, if in use cannot be used for 

 another species is sound common seuse. The same name 

 cannot logically be applied to two different species, at the 

 same time. 



But suppose the older (similar) name is obsolete — never 

 now used — and is amongst the " bygones'' — what then? 

 There cannot possibly be any confusion in retaining the 

 commonly current name for a well-known species, compared 

 with the confusion caused by abolishing it in favour of some 

 new name. Take for instance the Cassowary — Casuarius 

 australis. It is extremely doubtful if that name ever was, 

 but now never is, applied to the Emu (Dromaius nova>- 

 kollandice), therefore it is as dead as Julius Caesar and leaves 

 but the one name Casuarius australis (for the Cassowary) in 

 the world of knowledge to-day. 



" Rejected hononyms can never be again used " literally 

 means, that a name applied to describe one thing and the use 

 of which to describe a second thing has been rejected, can 

 never be used again. 



Therefore the rule does not, in fact, cover the ground 

 intended, but in the narrow interpretation which has 

 been given to it, it goes much further than was ever 

 intended. 



By " narrow interpretation " I refer, for instance, to the 

 strict ruling whereby a name which has been applied in an 

 isolated case to describe a species in some remote age by 

 some obscure writer, is by reason of such action rejected from 

 application to another species though it may have been 

 commonly used to refer to the later species by a number of 

 writers over a very considerable period. That seems to me 

 to be reducing a sound common-sense rule to an absurdity. 



* ' The Ibis,' 1920, p. 510. 



