Apeil 5, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



547 



ments ' and did not prove any of his ' facts or 

 figures to be inaccurate.' Such facts and 

 figures are of a kind one is not apt to carry 

 around in one's vest pocket, or to have pigeon- 

 holed ready for immediate use. Mr. Stone 

 had the advantage of six months or more for 

 preparation, and presented what seemed to be 

 — and to many really was — a convincing array 

 of statistics. From my general knowledge of 

 the subject I felt confident that both his 

 statistics and conclusions were misleading. I 

 was so strongly convinced of this that I 

 determined at once to make a thorough exami- 

 nation of the case, primarily for my own 

 satisfaction as to the real truth of the 

 matter. After three months or more of pretty 

 continuous application to the subject, I am 

 glad of the occasion Mr. Stone's second article 

 affords to make public the results. 



But first a few words in reference to some 

 of the ' points ' he has endeavored to make in 

 his rejoinder. 



1. In regard to his attempt to explain away 

 his original statement that " Elimination has 

 never been practised in Europe and does not 

 seem to be understood there," it seems a pretty 

 small loophole of escape, in the face of Dr. 

 Bather's reply* to this phase of his paper, to 

 say (see foot-note to p. 148) that he meant 

 ' simply that they did not interpret the method 

 in the way Americans have done.' He cites 

 the case of Passerina and Sarcorhamphus as 

 the ' sort of name shifting ' he ' claimed to be 

 not understood abroad ' ; and says further, that 

 where a first reviser had failed to fix the type 

 on the first species " subsequent authors have 

 frequently ignored them and have selected the 

 first species as the type." This is unfor- 

 tunately true of Mr. Stone and his first species 

 rule associates, but is not true as a general 

 statement of how things have been done in 

 the past, either in Europe or in America. It 

 would be easy to fill columns of Science with 

 evidence in disproof of such an assumption. 



2. It would take up too much space to reply 

 in detail to the many points wherein he 

 seems to have misunderstood or placed a 



* ' Elimination in Fixing Genotypes,' by Dr. F. 

 A. Bather, Science, N. S., Vol. XXIV., No. 625, 

 pp. 809, 810, December 21, 1906. 



forced construction upon my statements; yet 

 one or two points may be referred to as an 

 illustration of the hopelessness of attempting 

 to diffuse light where light is not desired. If 

 he is unable to see that I have already shown 

 that the first species method is not always so 

 simple in application as he has claimed, and 

 is able to exclaim with sincerity : " Surely to 

 ascertain the first species mentioned by an 

 author in describing a new genus we have only 

 to look at his original description ! " and with 

 the intention of implying that this is all there 

 is to do under any circumstances in determin- 

 ing types by the first species rule, reiteration 

 of evidence already given, and the presentation 

 of other like evidence, seem a useless waste 

 of effort. Fixing types implies the determina- 

 tion of the validity of genera, as this is the 

 whole purpose of the work. It is one thing 

 to look up a genus and see what is its first 

 species, and another thing to determine 

 whether this first species has not already been 

 the first species of some other genus. This was 

 the import of my remarks and illustrations, 

 and they were open to no other construction. 



3. Mr. Stone says, on p. 149, that "if the 

 types of two or more genera happen to be the 

 same by elimination the later genera become 

 pure synonyms of the earliest"; which is 

 quite true, but it has no bearing on the point 

 at issue, which is that a later genus must be- 

 come a sjTionym of any earlier one that has 

 the same first species, no matter how different 

 may be their constituents as a whole, while by 

 elimination a heterotypic genus can be re- 

 stricted so that the name, instead of being 

 reduced to synonymy, may be conserved for 

 some part of its original constituency. As an 

 illustration we may take the genera Limosa 

 Brisson, 1760, and Actitis Illiger, 1811. As 

 originally constituted, Limosa contained 8 

 species, representing 3 modern genera; Actitis 

 contained 4 species, representing 4 modem 

 genera. Of these 12 species, only two were 

 common to both genera. The first species was 

 the same in both, namely, Scolopax limosa 

 Linn., which by tautonomy is the type of 

 Limosa, and by first species rule is also type 

 of Actitis. By elimination the type of Actitis 

 is Tringa hypoleucos Linn., the fourth and 



