No. 2.] THE AUSTRAL AVIAN RECORD 31 



ON THE "TABLE DES PLANCHES ENLUM." OF 

 BODDAERT. 



By Gregory M. Mathews and Tom Iked ale. 



The acquisition, by the senior author, of a very choice copy 

 of this exceedingly rare work, and consequently its careful 

 examination, made it evident that a detailed criticism of 

 the names proposed in it was necessary. The junior author 

 had, some years ago, tentatively prepared such a list, so it 

 was considered opportune to now complete the work. 



We would make some comments on the book as possibly 

 we will incur some criticism as being " priority hunters," etc. 



In the year 1874 a reprint was published under the 

 editorship of W. B. Tegetmeier. The first paragraph of the 

 Editor's Preface reads : " M. Boddaert's exceedingly rare 

 work, of which only a very few copies were printed, was 

 published at Utrecht in 1783. Its present value to zoologists 

 is due to its applying for the first time, to very many 

 species, the presently received system of scientific nomen- 

 clature, and thus fixing, by reason of priority, the names of 

 a considerable number of genera and species." We are thus, 

 in our pursuit of priority, a little over forty years behind. 

 Our purpose in writing this note is to show that our ancestral 

 priority hunters did not do their work completely and therefore 

 left a little to reward our services. 



The book consists of a collation of the plates of birds known 

 as the Planch. Enlum. of Daubenton with the descriptions 

 given in Buffon's Hist. Nat., Brisson's Ornith., Linne's Syst. 

 Nat., Xllth Ed., etc. When no Latin name was otherwise 

 available Boddaert sometimes proposed one, but as often he 

 did not. In many cases he considered the Brissonian name, 

 whether binomial or not, sufficient, and in some cases proposed 

 names himself in a trinomial form. In many cases he put 

 " mihi " after his new proposition, but in as many he omitted 

 this precaution. Moreover, when he failed to distinguish his 

 new name, he immediately continued in a puzzling manner 

 with the information that it was missing from Linne's work. 



