368 
CHAPTER OF CRITICISM. 
place, whether he has ever read or seen Cuvieb’s Regne Animal; and secondly, 
whether Cargocatactes nucifraga occurs therein, as Mr. Sweeiing has boldly 
stated. I perceive that the Editor asks the same question; but Mr. Wood is 
wrong in stating that Nilsson, in the Ornithologia Suecica^ is the only author 
who has used the name,* as I proposed it some time since in The Naturalist^ 
and had at that time never heard of Nilsson. Mr. Sweeting makes rather a 
confused statement in his paper on the British Falconidce. I had laid down as 
a rule, that generic names should invariably be of Greek, and specific names 
always of Latin origin. But Mr. Sweeting says, that “ the practice of using 
Greek words for generic, and Latin for specific names of birds and other animals" 
did not originate with me, but was the invariable plan, wherever admissible, of 
Cuvier. Now I must beg of Mr. Sweeting to give me the chapter and page 
wherein Cuvier has laid down this as a rule. Until he can do this I think his 
instancing three birds with which such a rule (?) has been acted upon will have 
very little weight in proof of his assertion. I may here mention, by the way, 
that one of these names (JPernis') Mr. Sweeting did not know to be of Greek 
derivation till I pointed out its origin to him. 
“ Whenever admissible” ! May I ask, was it not the result of my arguments 
that it should always and invariably be admissible ? I doubt, however, very 
much whether Cuvier had any plan whatever of the sort. It should be a very 
long series, consisting of several thousand names (instead of three, or rather tim 
and a half., as I have shown above), to lead us to the conclusion that he had 
any such plan, in the absence of all declaration of having any plan of the kind, 
vdiich, if he had indeed made, I must again beg of Mr. Sweeting to point out 
when and where. Meantime I shall assert the correctness of my former state¬ 
ment in my treatise on scientific nomenclature in The Naturalist., that my 
laying down such a rule as a rule (and without exception too)., was the first time 
that such had been done, as it had ^^been before (but obscurely and faintly) 
acted on” 
I do not understand Mr. Sweeting’s following sentence; do you, Mr. Editor ? 
“ Classical names for birds, whether Greek or Latin, or Latin and Greek, ought, 
if truly appropriate, to be considered equally admissible.” Does he mean to set 
this up against what he before (though erroneously) stated to have been the 
“ invariable plan, whenever admissible, of the illustrious Baron Cuvier ?” But 
if so—if both are equally admissible, how comes he in the very next sentence to 
say, that “where both languages are employed'to designate species, I am quite 
* We stated that Nilsson was the only author, so far as we were aware, who employed it, in 
alluding, moreover, rather to separate works than to memoirs or papers published in Transactions, 
periodicals, &c.—E d. 
