October 23, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



535 



necessary delay, appeal to all scientific men and 

 let each judge as to the justice of my claim- 

 as being the first to correctly interpret and give 

 value to the things seen in the bodies of the in- 

 fected mosquitoes. 



Yours truly, 



(Signed) J. C. Smith. 



In conclusion, I will say that I am willing 

 to rest my case on the facts related, without 

 analysis or argument, and leave it to the judg- 

 ment of my readers if I am not entitled to 

 the recognition I claimed at the hands of Sur- 

 geon-General Wyman and the party. That 

 in the text treating on the parasite the fol- 

 lowing acknowledgment be placed : 



'' That the commission (or working party) 

 is indebted to Mr. J. C. Smith, of New Or- 

 leans, La., for his valuable services in working 

 out the sexual life-history of the parasite in 

 the body of the mosquito." 



J. C. Smith. 



New Oblkajjs, La., 

 September 24. 1903. 



SOME RECENT APPLICATIONS OF THE A. O. U. CODE. 



To THE Editor of Science: It is desirable 

 that there should be public discussion of dis- 

 puted cases \n nomenclature, for in no other 

 way can the weak points in codes, or in their 

 application, be so well brought out. For this 

 reason Science appears to be the proper place 

 for the following criticism. 



Dr. Stejneger (Proc. V. S. Nat. Mus., 1903, 

 p. 155) sets aside the specific portion of Cor- 

 onella sayi Holbr. (Ed. 2, Vol. III., 1842), for 

 sixty years used for Say's King-snake, now 

 Ophiholus getulus sayi, for the reason that 

 Holbrook was under the misapprehension 

 that his species was identical with Coluber 

 sayi Schlegel (1837), which is now Pityophis 

 sayi, a pine snake, and included that name in 

 his list of references. In consequence of 

 which, a new specific name, holbrooki Stej. 

 takes its place. The rule relied on for the 

 change is Canon XXXIII. of the A. O. U. 

 Code, which provides that ' a specific * * * 

 name is to be changed when it has been * » * 

 used previously in combination with the same 

 generic name.' It is quite true that in this 

 place Holbrook does cite Schlegel's name 



among his references, and'^m that' was 'dearly 

 wrong. But as he puts his species in 

 another genus, it does not appear that the 

 application of this rule is so clear as to be 

 compulsory. Curiously enough, however, a 

 better ground exists upon which the vacating 

 of Holbrook's name might be urged under the 

 rule. Holbrook's first description of the spe- 

 cies was under the name Coluber sayi Dekay, 

 in the lately discovered fourth volume of his 

 first edition (1840), now in the Academy's 

 library. The only reference given here is 

 'Dekay mss.'; Schlegel not being mentioned. 

 For some unknown reason Holbrook tried to 

 suppress this volume, and in his second edi- 

 tion he gave the same description and plate 

 under the name Coronella sayi Schlegel. 



It is of course true that by a strict con- 

 struction, which is usually a narrow one, the 

 rule quoted might be applied here, Holbrook 

 having first used sayi in connection with the 

 generic name used by Schlegel, but the fact 

 remains that Holbrook was indisputably the 

 first to describe publicly and name the species 

 from original specimens, and that he subse- 

 quently placed it in a different genus where 

 it is still retained by high authority among 

 herpetologists, his only error being in as- 

 sumin^that Schlegel's species was the same 

 as his. If, under the A. O. U. Code, there 

 is no escape from applying the rule here, then 

 it is one of the cases where the code conflicts 

 with justice and common sense. 



While I am on the subject I may mention 

 also Cope's substitution (Proc. U. S. Nat. 

 Mus., 1888, p. 392) of Natrix Laurenti (1768) 

 for the jvell-known Tropidonotus Kuhl (1826), 

 on the ground that while Natrix was a heter- 

 ogeneous collection of species, Natrix vulgaris, 

 which is a Tropidonotus, was its type. Here 

 we have a method of determining types which 

 leads to the absurdity of placing a group of 

 snakes with keeled and conspicuously rough 

 scales in a genus whose author among its 

 definitions expressly says ' Truncus glaber, 

 nitidus.' 



Arthur Ebwin Brown. 



Academy of Natvral Sciences, 

 Philadelphia, August 5, 1903. 



