C^n^e m iVflffw o/ Gracula pectoralis. 17 



and wings wanting, and the head much injured; yet his descrip- 

 tion is recognizable if we allow for the absence of the wings. 

 His name, however, is veiy faulty, as black is the colour of fully 

 two-thirds of the perfect bird, the yellow appearing only as a 

 band round the body and a patch on the rump and vent : luteo- 

 cinctus would therefore have been appropriate ; nigrocinctus is a 

 complete misnomer; and, in fact, it was that very name which 

 prevented me from inquiring further about the bird, which I 

 had long seen included in Dr. Sclater^s list of New-Guinea 

 birds. 



The question, then, is. Shall a name, given to a mutilated 

 skin, and which is erroneous and inapplicable as regards the 

 perfect bird, be perpetuated by the law of priority? Many 

 naturalists are now of opinion that where a description is pal- 

 pably incorrect or insufficient to distinguish a species among its 

 aUies, or when a name is plainly inapplicable to the species to 

 which it has been appUed, such names and descriptions should 

 be passed over as altogether void ; for it is evidently more to 

 the interest of our science that the inquirer should be at once 

 referred to a good description, which will settle his doubts, than 

 to an imperfect or incorrect one, which must only increase his 

 difficulties. A general conflagration of every work describing 

 species, published more than lifty years back, would be an un- 

 mixed blessing to zoology. 



In this case we have, first, a name and description of a made-up 

 specimen, of which probably one-fifth part only is genuine, and, 

 secondly, a specimen confessedly mutilated in its most important 

 parts, and the name given to which is inapplicable to the entire 

 bird ; and in both cases the absence of the legs and wings has 

 led to the species being placed in a wrong genus. I now leave 

 ornithologists to decide, in the interest of science, by what name 

 this bird shall be called ; and I would fm-ther beg to suggest, as 

 a useful and necessary supplement to the law of priority, that it 

 be decreed that where the first description of a species is abso- 

 lutely insufficient to determine the same, and a new name has, 

 owing to such insufficiency, been given to the species, with a good 

 and sufficient description attached, such new name shall be for 

 ever retained, notwithstanding at any future time thef&rmer name 

 may be proved to have been applied to the same species. 

 I remain. Gentlemen, 



Your most obedient Servant, 



Alfred R. Wallace. 



Ann. ^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser.3. Vol.xu 



