202 GRAY PHALAROPK. 



objects with which it is conversant, necessarily so encumbered 

 with names, that students require every possible assistance to 

 facilitate the attainment of those names, and have a just right 

 to complain of every needless impediment. Nor is it allowable 

 to alter such names, even for the better. In our science the 

 names established throughout the works of Linnaeus are be- 

 come current coin, nor can they be altered without great incon- 

 venience."* 



That there is a property in names as well as in things, will 

 not be disputed; and there are few naturalists who would not 

 feel as sensibly a fraud committed on their nomenclature as on 

 their purse. The ardour with which the student pursues his 

 researches, and the solicitude which he manifests in promulgat- 

 ing his discoveries under appropriate appellations, are proofs 

 that at least part of his gratification is derived from the suppos- 

 ed distinction which a name will confer upon him; deprive him 

 of this distinction, and you inflict a wound upon his self-love, 

 which will not readily be healed. 



To enter into a train of reasoning to prove that he who first 

 describes and names a subject of natural history, agreeably to 

 the laws of systematic classification, is for ever entitled to his 

 name, and that it cannot be superseded without injustice, would 

 be useless, because they are propositions which all naturalists 

 deem self-evident. Then how comes it, whilst we are so tena- 

 cious of our own rights, we so often disregard those of others? 



I would now come to the point. It will be perceived that I 

 have ventured to restore the long neglected name offulicaria. 

 That I shall be supported in this restoration I have little doubt, 

 when it shall have been manifest that it was Linnaeus himself 

 who first named this species. A reference to the tenth edition 

 of the Systema Naturae t will show that the authority for Tringa 



* An Introduction to Physiological and Systemical Botany, chap. 22. 



f Of all the editions of the Systema Naturae, the tenth and the twelfth 

 are the most valuable; the former being the first which contains the syno- 

 nymn, and the latter being 1 that which received the finishing hand of its 

 author. In the United States, Linnaeus is principally kno\vn through two 



