Miscellaneous. 331 
present writer replaced the name Thynnus by the term Orycnus, 
which was substituted, inasmuch as 7hynnuvs was used for a genus 
of Hymenopterous insects by Fabricius in 1775. This name Oryc- 
nus was simply due to a misreading of the name Oreynus, and was 
subsequently replaced by Orcynus in its correct form. Nevertheless 
in 1863 Dr. J. G. Cooper, in the ‘ Proceedings of the California 
Academy of Natural Sciences’ (vol. ii. p. 77), proposed to revert to 
the old groups of Cuvier in the following terms, describing a supposed 
new species related to the Alalonga of the Mediterranean, which he 
ealled Orcynus pacificus :— 
‘«‘This species is one of several confounded by sailors under the 
Spanish names of Albicore and Bonito. The English name Tunny 
is applied to an allied species on the coast of Europe, the Thynnus 
vulgaris, Cuv., and to its near representative, the 7’. secundi-dorsalis, 
Storer, of the eastern American coast. These, however, are evidently 
of a different genus, and, as Zhynnus is preoccupied in insects, the 
name Orycnus, applied by Gill to the same type, may perhaps be 
retained, although founded on a mistake.” 
Without reference to the reality of what was so evident to Dr. 
Cooper, we need only recall that here the name Orycnus was speci- 
fically proposed to be retained at the same time that Oreynus was 
used for a related genus. 
In 1888 Professor Jordan, in the ‘ Proceedings of the Academy of 
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia’ (reprinted in the ‘Annals and 
Magazine of Natural History’ for 1888, u1. p. 356), apparently over- 
looking this specific application of the name Orycnus by Cooper, 
proposed the new name Albacora for the same genus, inasmuch as 
Orcynus had been used in 1815 for a genus of Carangids by Rafinesque, 
while Thynnus of Cuvier, as is well known, had been preoccupied 
for a genus of Hymenopterous insects. 
The present author would have been glad if the name Orycnis 
could have fallen into “innocuous desuetude;” but inasmuch as it 
had been specifically and with malice prepense resurrected and pro- 
posed for retention by Cooper, it must surely be retained for the 
genus comprising the Tunny and Albicore. It belongs to a category 
of which there are many illustrations, being an anagram of another 
name, and numerous such have been proposed deliberately and gene- 
rally adopted, such as Panulirus and Linuparus, anagrams of Pali- 
nurus, and various others. 
If it is represented that the word Orycnus is merely due to a slip 
of the pen or typographical error, and therefore should not be re- 
tained, we can, in reply, refer for an analogous retention of an 
incorrect form to no less an authority than Professor Jordan. In 
the fifth edition of his excellent work ‘ A Manual of the Vertebrate 
Animals of the Northern United States,’ published a couple of 
months ago (1888, p. 92), we find the word Athlennes, which was 
originally. proposed in 1886 as a designation for the Belone hians of 
Cuvier and Valenciennes. As we suspected at the time of publica- 
tion, this name is really derived from an ancient Greek synonym of 
the common Belone belone of Europe, “a 3Aevyns, without mucosity,”’ 
