192 Mr. G. R. Gray's Catalogue of 



by the author as typical, it is the safest, best, and only certain rule, 

 to regard the species first enumerated as the type. This is a subject 

 to which I have given much thought : some rule was found to be 

 absolutely necessary ; it was in the highest degree desirable that the 

 rule should be uniform ; and the principle adopted was the only one, 

 which after long and cai'eful deliberation appeared to me to fulfil the 

 required conditions. Others may, if they think fit, and as some 

 modern authors have done, take the tenth or the twentieth species in 

 the list as the type of a Linnsean genus, and may give plausible rea- 

 sons for so doing ; but all must admit that such a course is one 

 leading to interminable argument, and leaves the door open to much 

 individual caprice. 



The reviewer proceeds to give instances in which he considers me 

 to be wrong. " Chenalo'pex" he says, " (a term always hitherto 

 appropriated to Anas Mgyptiaca,) is proposed to be used for the 

 Alca impennis, as having been so applied by Moehring in 1752." 

 Now it so happens that Vieillot adopted this generic name from 

 Moehring in his " subsequent and more perfect publication " of his 

 "Analyse" in 1818 ; while Stephens did not employ the same word 

 for Anas Myyptiaca until 1824. I think the reviewer wdll now 

 admit that ChenaJopex has not always been appropriated in the 

 manner stated by him. And let me here observe in behalf of this 

 unfortunate author (Moehring), whose work ('Genera Avium') I 

 have been charged with disturbing from the " dusty shelves " on 

 which it had lain " forgotten for a centuiy," that long before I could 

 have written or published a single word, his work had been consi- 

 dered worthy of quotation by Brisson, lUiger, Cuvier, Vieillot, Lesson 

 and others, through whose writings I first became acquainted with 

 his merits. 



Again, the reviewer says, " The type of the genus Tanagra is 

 altered, because the T. episcojms (ahvays hitherto considered as such) 

 does not stand first in Linnseus's list." Here again the reviewer is 

 in error. Tanagra was established by Linnaeus in 176(), and the 

 ^rst species in his list is T.jacapa. In 1805 Desmarest considers 

 T. tatao ( = Aglaia) as the type of Tanagra ; in 181 1 Illiger, taking 

 the first-named species in Linnreus's list, recurs to T. jacapa; in 

 1816 Vieillot gives T. cayanensis (:=Iliolopha) ; in 1817 Cuvier 

 adopts T. violacea ( = Euphonia) ; in 1820 Temminck takes Lanius 

 leverianus (=Cissopis) ; while it is not until 1827 that Swainson 

 proposes T. episcopus as the tyy)e of the genus Tanagra. But, even 

 were it possible to set aside all the previously proposed types of this 

 genus, there still remains a fatal objection against this last-named 

 appropriation of the name, if "the stern law of priority " is to have 

 any weight, inasmiich as M. Boie had in the previous year proposed 

 the name of Thraupis for a species which must be arranged along 

 wdth T. episcojms ; and consequently, were the views of the reviewer 

 to be critically carried out, the name of Tanagra would be erased 

 from the nomenclature of the Tanagers altogether. To this conclu- 

 sion I am not prepared to follow him ; any more than I can admit, 

 after the above recapitulation of facts, the correctness of his state- 



