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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 630 



that when they failed to do so, subsequent 

 authors have frequently ignored them and 

 have selected the first species as the type. 

 Furthermore, European authors have not prac- 

 tised the kind of elimination that shifts 

 Passerina on to the snowflake and Barco- 

 rhamphim on to the eared vulture, and this 

 sort of name shifting is what I claimed to be 

 not understood' abroad. 



Moreover, when we find that out of 277" com- 

 plex genera of birds the currently accepted 

 types of only 38 would be changed by the 

 operation of the first species rule I am forced 

 to believe that the first species was very gen- 

 erally regarded as the type by the first revisers 

 and that the result is not a mere ' coinci- 

 dence.' 



2. Dr. Allen states that the rules and rec- 

 ommendations of Dr. Stiles referred to by 

 me ' relate only in small part to the method 

 of elimination ' and cover the whole field of 

 the determination of generic types, including 

 the ' four conditions ' of (1) monotypic 

 genera, (2) type designation by the author, 

 (3) tautonomy and (4) selection of type by 

 subsequent author. 



This is perfectly true as applied to Dr. 

 Stiles's rules as a whole, but he has twenty- 

 four rules and recommendations and Dr. Allen 

 will find that I referred to only nineteen, omit- 

 ting those covering the first three conditions 

 stated above. It is true that I did incltide the 

 ' first reviser prerogative ' which Dr. Allen in 

 this connection implies is not elimination. It 

 seems to me, however, to be so intimately 

 associated with the operation of elimination 



' I regret that this word has proven mislead- 

 ing. I had no intention whatever to question the 

 ability of our friends across the water to practise 

 elimination as Dr. Bather supposed, but simply 

 that they did not interpret the method in the 

 way Americans have done. 



- Since my paper was published I have con- 

 tinued my card list of bird genera to 1830. Up 

 to that date I have 1,119 genera, of which 842 

 are either (1) monotypic, (2) have their types 

 designated by their authors, (3) indicated by 

 tautonomy or (4) are substitutes, leaving 277 

 with no indication of type, and in 86 per cent, 

 of these the first species is the currently accepted 

 type according to the British Museum catalogue. 



as to be inseparable from it, and Dr. Allen 

 himself says on p. 773 that with the adoption 

 of the ' first reviser ' rule ' the elimination 

 principle follows as a necessary corollary.' 

 The thirteen secondary suggestions to which 

 I referred all relate to elimination in its 

 strictest sense. 



3. On p. 775 Dr. Allen makes a statement 

 that I fail to understand, i. e., " that the first 

 species method is ' not always so simple and 

 direct ' as I have stated and that the case of 

 Vidtur will show that more than one refer- 

 ence must be consulted even under the first 

 species rule." I have searched in vain for any 

 demonstration of this claim in the subse- 

 quent pages of Dr. Allen's paper. Surely to 

 ascertain the first species mentioned by an 

 author in describing a new genus we have 

 only to look at his original description! Dr. 

 Allen must certainly have misunderstood the 

 first species method here and also at the bot- 

 tom of p. 776, where he says it would con- 

 flict with the ' rule that a monotypic genus 

 takes its sole species as its type.' If harhatus 

 had been the first species in VidtWj as he 

 suggests, it would of course be the type, but 

 this would in no way affect the type of the 

 monotypic genus Gypaetus which would re- 

 main harhatus. Gypaetus being of later date 

 would of course be a synonym of Vultur just 

 as it would have been if harhatus had been the 

 only species in Vultur or if it had been 

 designated by Linnjeus as the type of Vultur. 

 This argTiment simply shows that genera with 

 the same types are synonyms and has no 

 further bearing. 



4. Dr. Allen at p. 778 calls attention to 

 the fact that " by the first species rule, where 

 the first species happens to be the same in two 

 or more genera * * * all the later genera 

 become pure synonyms of the earliest genus " 

 and then goes on to say : " It is thus evident 

 that Mr. Stone's statistics greatly underesti- 

 mate the number of changes in names that 

 would result from the adoption of the first 

 species rule." This deduction is entirely un- 

 warranted. It assumes that I overlooked the 

 synonymizing of genera with the same first 

 species. This I did not do and all changes 

 due to this cause are included in my statistics. 



