102 PROCEEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



names, including those derived from Poli. They have since been used 

 by many authors on the Continent and in America. 



Having now explained Poli's method of nomenclature, and the use 

 Tphich was subsequently made of some of his names, I will now briefly 

 consider whether any usage of them can be justified under modern 

 regulations. 



In the first place it may be argued that it does not matter what the 

 original intention of Poli may have been, for since both the shell and the 

 animal are now recognized to be parts of one and the same organism, 

 a name applied to the one can now be applied to both. Hence, if Poli 

 was the first to distinguish and to give a name to any Molluscan animal, 

 or generic group of animals, that name can be used in our modern 

 nomenclature. 



This argument, however, can only hold good in cases where no 

 displacement of a Linnean or other older name is involved. It may 

 apply to one or two of the cases where only single species are quoted 

 by Poli. Thus Glossies was the name given by him to the animal 

 of the shell called Cliama cor by Linnaeus and afterwards generically 

 separated by Lamarck under the name of Isocardia cor. I do not 

 see that any reasonable objection can be made to the adoption of Poli's 

 name Glossus, which antedates that of Lamarck. The specific name 

 given to the animal by Poli will, of course, be dropped in favour of the 

 Linnean name cor; neither is there any necessity to use the term 

 Glossoderma, because that was only introduced after the description 

 and naming of the Glossus animal. 



In other cases, however, where Poli's malacological genus included 

 the animals of two or more Linnean genera of shells the circumstances 

 are different, and I think that his use of the name for a group of 

 animals apart from their shells should have been properly understood 

 and respected. No one ought to have applied the name Callista, 

 for instance, to certain species of Venus, since it was Poli's express 

 intention to include species of Mactra as well as Venus under this 

 denomination, and he had no idea of interfering with Linnaeus' 

 nomenclature of the shells. Such a use of the name Callista is not in 

 any sense Poli's use of it, but is a new and diff'erent application of 

 it by later authors, such as Leach and Morch ; if, therefore, the name 

 Callista is to be admitted into modern nomenclature it must date from 

 one of these authors and not from Poli. 



Now since neither Leach nor Morch specified a type for their genus 

 Callista, the type of the genus must be determined in accordance with 

 the rule recently adopted by the International Zoological Congress 

 at Boston.^ So far as I can ascertain, the first author to designate 

 a type was Meek, in 1876.^ He gives Venus chione as the type; 

 whence it follows that Morch's use of the name (1853), and not 

 Leach's (1852), must be accepted as the original date for the genus 

 Callista. 



See Science iox October 18th, 1907. 



U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, Eeports, vol. ix, p. 177 (1876). 



