NOTES ON THE NOMENCLATURE OF CERTAIN 
GENERA OF BIRDS 
By HARRY C. OBERHOLSER 
The following notes concern the status of some seventeen generic 
and a few specific terms that seem to require change. Most of these, 
though for several years held in abeyance by the writer, appear not 
yet to have been published by others; a few are revivals of former 
changes that lately have been ignored; and one or two have been 
mentioned as probably necessary by recent writers who failed to go 
farther. The alterations in specific names pertain only to species 
belonging to the genera treated. 
The writer is under obligation to Dr. Charles W. Richmond for 
various courtesies in connection with the preparation of this paper, 
and wishes here to express his consequent appreciation. 
BELLONA Mulsant and Verreaux 
This name,’ employed by authors for a genus of West India 
hummingbirds, is, as already pointed out by Mr. J. H. Riley,? un- 
tenable, being preoccupied by Bellona Reichenbach,? a genus of 
ornithicnites. In seeking a name for the group, however, Mr. Riley 
rejects the once used Orthorhyncus Lacépéde* as a nomen nudum 
because “ no type was specified and the diagnosis is not diagnostic,” 
but revives it ta date from Froriep,* and by elimination fixes as its 
type Trochilus mosquitus Linneus. Then, since Orthorhyncus 
would thus take the place of the present Chrysolampis, Mr. Riley, 
still by process of elimination, transfers the name Chrysolampis to 
the group now known as Eulampis, and the term Eulampis to the 
unidentified “ Trochilus niger”? Wied. This arrangement leaves the 
preoccupied Bellona without a name, and it is accordingly christened 
Microlyssa.* These changes, however, can not stand, because 
Orthorhyncus is the proper name for Bellona, as may easily be 
shown; and they furthermore constitute a forcible illustration of the 
* Bellona Mulsant and Verreaux, Classif. Troch., 1866, p. 75. 
* Auk, 1904, p. 485. 
3 Riley, Auk, 1904, p. 485. 
4 Natirl. Syst. Vogel, 1852, p. xxx. 
= abl, Ots:, 1790, ‘p: 0: 
6 Dumeril’s Analyt. Zool., 1806, p. 47. 
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