32 FRANCIS HEMMING 



published in 1799, should become the oldest available specific name for the species Papilio 

 glandon Prunner, and (b) that the specific name pheretes Hoffmannsegg should become the 

 oldest available name for the species named Papilio orbituhts by Prunner. However, the tide 

 of opinion was then running strongly in favour of the strict application of the Law of Priority 

 in the case of specific names and it would have been pointless to make any application on the 

 foregoing lines to the Commission. 



In the circumstances there was no alternative but to transfer the specific name orbitulus 

 Prunner to the species till then always known by the specific name pheretes, and to apply the 

 name glandon Prunner to the species till then wrongly known as orbitulus Prunner. The 

 process was painful and protracted, often leading to confusion where an author writing a 

 faunistic paper used the specific name orbitulus without indicating whether he was using that 

 name in the time-honoured sense (as applying to Papilio glandon) or in the correct sense (as 

 applying to the species formerly known by the specific name pheretes). This change-over in 

 usage took about ten years to accomplish but was more or less complete by the later nineteen- 

 thirties. But this change in itself was not sufficient to restore order in the nomenclature of 

 these species because of consequential difficulties at the genus-name level. By this time these 

 two species were considered by taxonomists to belong to different genera, Papilio glandon 

 ( = the false orbitulus auct.) was placed in the genus Agriades Hiibner, while the true Papilio 

 orbitulus (=pheretes Hoffmannsegg) was placed in the genus Albulina Tutt, 1909 (q.v.). 

 Under the salutary (and, indeed, necessary) objective nomenclatorial rule that an author 

 establishing a nominal genus is to be assumed to have correctly identified the species placed 

 by him in it and that a later author selecting such a species as type-species is similarly to be 

 assumed to have correctly identified the species so selected, the type-species of Agriades 

 Hiibner, as selected by Scudder (1875) would have been the true Papilio orbitulus Prunner ; 

 in consequence that generic name would have become a senior subjective synonym of Albulina 

 Tutt, of which the same species (under the name pheretes) is the type-species ; at the same 

 time the species previously misidentified with orbitulus Prunner, i.e. Papilio glandon Prunner 

 would have been left without a generic name, for the only generic name ever applied to that 

 species, apart from Agriades Hiibner, namely Latiorina Tutt, 1909, suffers from the same defect 

 as Agriades Hiibner, that is, its type-species was designated under the misidentified specific 

 name orbitulus Prunner ; in consequence it had to be interpreted as having as its type-species 

 the true Papilio orbitulus Prunner (pheretes Hoffmannsegg) and, contrary to its author's 

 evident intention, became a subjective synonym of Albulina Tutt. 



Fortunately, it was never necessary in practice to alter the application of the generic name 

 Agriades Hiibner in the foregoing way, for before any such attempt had been made, I submit- 

 ted in 1935 an application to the Commission asking for the designation under the Plenary 

 Powers of Papilio glandon Prunner as the type-species of Agriades Hiibner, thus giving a valid 

 foundation to the long-accustomed usage of this name. This application was approved by the 

 Commission at its Session held at Lisbon in 1935 but owing to administrative and other 

 causes it was not until 1946 that the Opinion (Opinion 173) recording this Ruling was actually 

 published. Later in Opinion 270 (1954, Opin. int. Comm. zool. Nom 6 : 25-40) the Commission 

 placed the name Agriades Hiibner (type-species : Papilio glandon Prunner, 1798) on the 

 Official List of Generic Names in Zoology as Name No. 685. 



AGRIAS Doubleday, 1844, List Spec. lep. Ins. Brit. Mus. 1 : 106. Type-species by selection by 

 Scudder (1875, Proc. amer. Acad. Arts Sci., Boston 10 : 105, 106) : Papilio Claudia Schulze, 

 1776, Der Naturforscher 9 : 100, pi. 2, 2 figs. 



In his " List " Doubleday included a number of names which, though till then unpublished 

 and therefore from a nomenclatorial point of view " new " names, had previously been coined 

 by other authors and had acquired an irregular currency in manuscript. It seems likely that 

 the present is a case of this kind, for, although Doubleday did not attribute the specific name 

 claudia to Boisduval, he did so attribute the binomen Agrias claudia, thus signifying — it 

 seems to me — that the generic name Agrias had already been used by Boisduval, possibly on 

 the data label attached to some specimen. 



