The Zoologist— February, 1868. 1103 



always understood the rule to be this— that the specific name by which an insect is to 

 be called and known is the name under which a sufficient description of the species 

 was first published. 



"Names contained in a paper which is privately printed, but not published, rank 

 only as MS. names: however freely the paper may be disseminated among the author's 

 friends, however wide the circle of his acquaintance, it must still remain inaccessible 

 to the public, — it is not published withiD the meaning of the rule. 



" What then are the facts concerning the paper which Mr. Edward Saunders 

 (following Laporte and Gory and others) cites as Hope's ' Synopsis of Australian 

 Buprestidae ' ? 



" The paper in question consists of thirteen printed pages, at the top of the first of 

 which is the word BupkestidjE; this is the only title which it bears. There is no title- 

 page, preface, introduction or explanation whatsoever ; no author's name, no printer's 

 name, no date; no name of any bookseller or of any place at which the public might 

 obtain it; and as to many of the insects described, there is nothing to show that they 

 are Australian species, or to point out the collections in which the type-specimens were 

 deposited. 



" At the same time there is no doubt that the author was Mr. Hope, that the date 

 of printing was the year 1836, that the insects are all from Australia, and (when no 

 other collection is mentioned) were in Mr. Hope's own cabinet; and lastly, besides the 

 descriptions of sixty-six new species, the paper contains references to all the previously- 

 described Australian Buprestidae, (twenty-seven in number) so that 'A Synopsis of 

 Australian Buprestidae ' would have been a very appropriate title to have given it. 



" There can be little doubt that a print of this paper was in the hands of Laporte 

 and Gory when they prepared their Monograph of the Buprestidae, and it must be 

 admitted that they cite the 'Synopsis of Australian Buprestidae' as if it were a 

 published work. Other writers have done the same, probably following Laporte and 

 Gory, without having their attention directed to the question of publication or non- 

 publication. It is true also that Hope himself (Col. Man. iii. 173) in 1840 speaks of 

 'a Prodromus which I published some few years back.' 'Published' in the sense of 

 being communicated to his entomological friends, I have no doubt it was ; but 

 'published' in the sense of being made accessible to or obtainable by the public, I 

 believe it never was. 



"Out of sixty-six forms described by Hope in ' Buprestidae' as new species, it 

 appears from Mr. Edward Saunders' investigations that three are unrecognizable, the 

 type-specimens having been lost, and fourteen sink either as synonyms or varieties. 

 Of the remaining forty-nine, the Hopeian names were in twenty-eight instances adopted 

 and rightly applied by Laporte and Gory ; fourteen have been published subsequently 

 to 1836 under names different from Hope's, and these have been rejected by Mr. Edward 

 Sauuders, and the unpublished Hopeian names preferred. Of the residue, seven in 

 number, descriptions (under Mr. Hope's names) are now for the first time about to be 

 published by Mr. Edward Saunders. 



" The necessity for the laborious examination which Mr. Edward Saunders has 

 made is sufficient evidence that the insects in question have not become known, and 

 do not pass current in the entomological world, by the names assigned to them by 

 Hope. Such of his names as are in use have come into use in consequence of their 

 adoption aud publication by Laporte and Gory. So far from the printing of 



