GRAY PHALAEOPE. 11 



under -wliicli this bird has been described. What could induce that 

 respectable naturalist, M. Temminck, to give it a new appellation, we 

 are totally at a loss to conceive. That his name is good, that it is even 

 better than all the rest, we are willing to admit ; but that he had no 

 right to give it a new name, we shall boldly maintain, not only on the 

 score of expediency, but of justice. If the right to change be once 

 conceded, there is no calculating the extent of the confusion in which 

 the whole system of nomenclature will be involved. The study of 

 methodical natural history is sufficiently laborious, and whatever will 

 have a tendency to diminish this labor, ought to meet the cordial sup- 

 port of all those who are interested in the advancement of the natural 

 sciences. 



" The study of Natural History," says the present learned president 

 of the Linnean Society, "is, from the multitude of objects with which 

 it is conversant, necessarily so encumbered with names, that students 

 require every possible assistance to facilitate the attainment of those 

 names, and have a just right to complain of every needless impediment. 

 Nor is it allowable to alter such names, even for the better. In our 

 science the names established throughout the works of Linnaeus are be- 

 come current coin, nor can they be altered without great incon- 

 venience."* 



That there is a property in names as well as in things, will not be 

 disputed ; and there are few naturalists who would not feel as sensibly 

 a fraud committed on their nomenclature as on their purse. The ardor 

 with which the student pursues his researches, and the solicitude which 

 he manifests in promulgating his discoveries under appropriate appella- 

 tions, are proofs that at least part of his gratification is derived from 

 the supposed distinction which a name will confer upon him ; deprive 

 him of this distinction, and you inflict a wound upon his self-love, which 

 will not readily be healed. 



To enter into a train of reasoning to prove that he who first describes 

 and names a subject of natural history, agreeably to the laws of syste- 

 matic classification, is for ever entitled to his name, and that it cannot 

 be superseded without injustice, would be useless, because they are pro- 

 positions which all naturalists deem self-evident. Then how comes it, 

 whilst we are so tenacious of our own rights, we so often disregard those 

 of others ? 



I would now come to the point. It will be perceived that I have ven- 

 tured to restore the long neglected name of fulicaria. That I shall be 

 supported in this restoration I have little doubt, when it shall have been 

 manifest that it was Linnaeus himself who first named this species. A 



* An Introduction to Physiological and Sjstemical Botanj-, chap. 22. 



