202 
GRAY PHALAROPE. 
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 ardour with which the student pursues his 
researches, and the solicitude which he manifests in promulgat- 
ing his discoveries under appropriate appellations, are proofs 
that at least part of his gratification is derived from the suppos- 
ed 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 systematic classification, is for ever entitled to his 
name, and that it cannot be superseded without injustice, would 
be useless, because they are propositions which all naturalists 
deem self-evident. Then how comes it, whilst we are so tena- 
cious 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 ventured 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 reference to the tenth edition 
of the Systema Naturaet will show that the authority for Tringa 
* An Introduction to Physiological and Systemical Botany, chap. 22. 
t Of all the editions of the Systema Naturs, the tenth and the twelfth 
are the most valuable; the former being the first which contains the syno- 
nyma, and the latter being that which received the finislung hand of its 
author. In tire United States, Linnaeus is principally known through two 
