362 PALEONTOLOGY 



is a homonym of Avalonia Walcott, 1889. Again James 

 Sowerby in 1820 gave the name Spirifer pinguis to a 

 Carboniferous fossil ; Zieten in 1838 gave the same name 

 to a Jurassic fossil. Hence S. pinguis Zieten, 1838, is a 

 homonym of S. pinguis J. Sowerby, 1820. When a 

 homonym has to be quoted, it is advisable to make its 

 homonymity clear by putting it thus : 



Avalonia Seeley, 1898, non Walcott, 1889. 



Spirifer pinguis Zieten, 1838, non J. Sowerby, 1820. 



Generic homonyms are of course suppressed as soon as 

 discovered, and a new name substituted usually a name 

 only differing slightly from that suppressed. Thus 

 Emmrich in 1844 gave the name Dalmania (in honour of 

 the Swedish palaeontologist Dalman) to a genus of trilo- 

 bites which he separated from Phacops ; but Dalmania had 

 been previously applied to an insect, therefore Barrande 

 in 1852 substituted the name Dalmanites. Sometimes an 

 author is less fortunate. Thus Goldfuss in 1839 gave 

 another trilobite-genus the name Brontes ; finding this 

 preoccupied he changed it in 1844 to Bronteus, but in the 

 meantime de Koninck had given the same genus the 

 name Goldius, and although palaeontologists have been 

 accustomed to the name Bronteus there can be no doubt 

 that Goldius has priority over it and should strictly be 

 used in place of it. 



As an example of a specific homonym, we may take 

 the following case : J. Sowerby, in 1818, named a lamelli- 

 branch Cardita lirata, and in 1819 named another Lutraria 

 lirata. In 1826 his son, J. de Carle Sowerby, made a new 

 genus, Pholadomya, to which he transferred both the above 

 species, each of them thus becoming Pholadomya lirata (J. 

 Sowerby). The 1818 species having the prior claim of 

 the two to this name, it became a homonym in its appli- 

 cation to the 1819 species, and consequently a new name 

 was given to it, and it is now Pholadomya fidicnla J. de C. 



