64 Allen Generic Names of the Mephitince. 



scription and figure; yet, as Coues says, it was * 'based primarily 

 upon Putorius americanus striatus Catesby." The only other 

 author Linnaeus cited under this name in 175& was Kalm, 

 whose account of the external characters of the Pennsylvania 

 skunk is a paraphrase of Catesby's. This slip of Linnaeus's 

 in paraphrasing Catesby would of course greatly help the 

 case for Spilogale were it not that there is no other source 

 than Catesby as the basis for his diagnosis. Coues was evi- 

 dently influenced by this error in accepting putorius, as he 

 refers repeatedly in his discussion of the matter to the "four 

 stripes" mentioned by Linnaeus, while it is not at all evident 

 that he actually consulted Catesby in this immediate connection. 



As said in my former paper, the two Linnaean skunk names, 

 Viverra memphitis and V. putorius, are both equally uncitable, 

 and, aside from perfunctory compilers,. were so treated by all 

 scientific writers prior to Coues's attempted revival of putorius 

 in 1875. 



Mr. Ho well says (p. 6), that the question of the type of Me- 

 phitis was not affected by the revisions of the genus by Gray 

 (1837) and Lichtenstein (1838), because they simply removed 

 from the group to new genera species which had been placed 

 under Mephitis by later authors. Mr. Howell thus fails to grasp 

 the fact that these removals were in effect a restriction of the 

 genus Mephitis to its original components, and that therefore 

 Lesson, in 1842, could not substitute a new genus Chincha for 

 the old and already repeatedly restricted genus Mephitis. Nor 

 does he seem to recognize the impropriety of his attempt to en- 

 force this substitution, and his own transference of Mephitis to 

 the Spilogale group, on the basis of a nominal species rejected 

 as having no proper foundation by all investigators of the mat- 

 ter down to Coues, who was influenced, as already shown, by 

 Linnaeus's evident lapsus in writing quatuor where he should 

 have written quinque, and not by the real character of Catesby's 

 description and figure on which Linnaeus's diagnosis must, in 

 the nature of things, have been based. Catesby says his animal 

 had a median white stripe running from the head to the rump, 

 "with four others, two on each side, running parallel with it." 

 Evidently Linnaeus in compiling his diagnosis must have care- 

 lessly missed the reference to the median white stripe, or else 



