Vol. XXXl] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 63 



pliment. In case the author of the preoccupied name is liv- 

 ing the ethical thing to do is to inform him of the preoccupa- 

 tion and let him propose a new name. 



Names of geographic significance also should be used spar- 

 ingly; their chief merit lies in carrying a reminder of the type- 

 locality or even in some cases of the range of the form. Usu- 

 ally however, at the time of original description of a form 

 information on its geographic distribution is too scanty to 

 permit selection of a name that will broadly indicate the 

 range. When the type locality only is commemorated, sub- 

 sequent advances in knowledge may reveal that the type was 

 collected in the outskirts of the range and that it does not be- 

 long to a really typical form of the species all forms of which 

 nevertheless must thereafter appear with a misleading geo- 

 graphical body name. The name of the Golden plover, 

 Charadrius dominiciis, is an example of this, the type speci- 

 men for the earliest name being obtained on the island of 

 Santo Domingo, where the species is only a transient, the 

 summer home being in the Arctic Regions and the winter 

 home in the Southern Hemisphere. For insects, Professor 

 H. F. Wickham has kindly cited several geographically de- 

 rived names of beetles which give no adequate idea of the 

 range, for example, Mantiira floridana ranging to California 

 and Fort Simpson, Aphodiiis aleutus which occurs in moun- 

 tains to Colorado and California, the wide-ranging "^e;?;/^^/- 

 vanicus'' species as of Nyctobates, Chaidiognathus, ChJaenius 

 and Harpaliis, the comparable carolinus, virginicus, and nove- 

 boracensis species and so on. Dorcatoma dresdensis, named 

 for the European city is an extreme example of this kind, the 

 species occuring commonly over middle and northern Europe 

 and from New England and Virginia to Missouri and Mon- 

 tana.* 



*Assistance in gathering examples of misused geographic names has 

 kindly been given by Messrs. H. L. Viereck, Alex. Wetmore and H. F. 

 Wickham. 



