No. 6.] THE AUSTRAL AVIAN RECORD 151 



THE VALIDITY OF SOME GENERIC TERMS. 

 By Gregory M. Mathews and Tom Iredale. 



A matter for urgent consideration is the determination of 

 generic names diagnosed but without nomination of species. 

 Such names have been submitted for Opinion to the Inter- 

 national Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, and in 

 Opinion No. 46 their conclusions are embodied thus : " In 

 genera published without mention, by name, of any species, 

 no species is available as genotype unless it can be recognised 

 from the original generic publication ; if only one species is 

 involved the generic description is equivalent to the publication 

 of ' X-us albus, n.g., n.sp.' ; if several species are referred to 

 but not mentioned by name, one of these species must be 

 taken as type ; if (as in Aclastus, Foerster 1868) it is not evident 

 from the original publication how many or what species are 

 involved, the genus contains all of the species of the world 

 which would come under the generic description as originally 

 published, and the first species in connection with the genus 

 (as Aclastus rufipes Ashmead 1902) becomes ipso facto the 

 type." 



This decision does not deal with generic names where the 

 diagnosis is insufficient or so incomplete as to defy recognition. 

 Thus, " no species is available as genotype unless it can be 

 recognised from the original generic publication " is the reading ; 

 but what is the status of the name if no species answers to the 

 diagnosis ? Can it be considered a nomen nudum, or must it 

 be regarded as an indeterminable name, and, though invalid 

 itself, prohibit its usage in scientific work in any connection ? 



We have had under consideration for many years the names 

 proposed by Lacepede in 1799, and we have recently shown 

 that these demand careful consideration as a whole, and also 

 individually. So little seems to be generally known that we 



