164 Dr. J. E. Gray on Ateles Bartletti. 



travellers who collect them, and are entered in the register 

 with the habitats which they give them. 



At the same meeting " Dr. Sclater exhibited a typical speci- 

 men of Ateles variegatus, Wagner, and pointed out its un- 

 questionable identity with A. Bartletti, Gray." 



I and other zoologists must be deeply indebted to the 

 Bavarian Government, and to the Director and Conservator 

 of the Museum at Munich, for having allowed one of their 

 " tyjDical specimens " to leave the country, to the Council of 

 the Zoological Society for having incurred the expense of its 

 transmission, and to Dr. Sclater for the energy he has shown 

 m this important question, by which they have determined 

 that the Ateles variegatus of Wagner is not the Ateles tnela- 

 nochir, as was formerly believed, but the same as A. Bartletti, 

 which Avas published in the ^ Proceedings ' of the Society, 

 under Dr. Sclater's editorship, several years ago; and I suppose 

 its being Wagner's is a new discovery to him, as well as it is 

 to myself; and therefore it was not a very great crime on my 

 part not to know it. It did not require great scientific acumen 

 to discover it when the specimen was observed in a Continen- 

 tal museum. However, I must say that, although I do not quite 

 agree with it, there is great truth in the observation of Mr. Cotrel 

 Watson (the author of 'Cybele Britannica'), "that wilfully 

 to impose a new name to a plant already sufficiently named 

 should be treated as an impertinence ; on pretence of priority, 

 to rake up and restore an old name which has fallen out of 

 use, should be scouted as a mischief; the personal vanity 

 which impels authors into this practice should be denounced 

 as a nuisance." The late Dr. Walsh, the celebrated American 

 entomologist, has been more severe. '' To my mind," he says, 

 " the naturalist who rakes up out of the dust of old libraries 

 some long-forgotten name, and demands that it shall take the 

 place of a name of universal acceptance, ought to be indicted 

 before the High Court of Science as a public nuisance, and, 

 on conviction, sent to a Scientific Penitentiary and fed there 

 for the whole remaining term of his scientific life upon a diet 

 of chinch-bugs and formic acid." 



Unfortunately there is often as much personal animosity as 

 vanity at the base of these proposed alterations and corrections, 

 especially when they only refer to an isolated species of a 

 genus, and do not arise from a general sinwey of the group, 

 and when they are only directed against the writings of an 

 individual author. In this case it will be necessary that the 

 specimens in the Mtmich and the British Museums should 

 each retain the name under which it had been described, or 

 they will lose their typical identity, which is now considered 



