1922. j 
Natural-history Notes. 
317 
respective publications; hence most zoologists have accepted his deter¬ 
mination, Lampris luna. Gunther was perhaps the greatest authority on 
fishes there has been, certainly in the British Empire, but he was not so 
careful of the laws of priority as are his successors. But even those well- 
known authors Goode and Beane do not mention Gunnerus or his specific 
name ; they call the fish Lampris regius. 
As I am not one who has time or inclination or opportunity to delve 
into the literature of the past—and, indeed, much of this early literature is 
accessible only to a comparatively few people in Europe—it is perhaps 
presumptuous of me to criticize; but perhaps Goode and Beane held that 
the publication in which Gunnerus used the name pelagicus was not one 
that was sufficiently accepted as a scientific publication,” and that it 
does not come into the category of “ accepted works ” for deciding questions 
of priority. At any rate, Gunnerus’s name remained hidden from zoologists 
till the year 1900, for in the Rec. Cant. Mus., vol. 1, p. 186, 1911, Waite 
notes that an investigator, Lonnberg, had unearthed this name pelagicus, 
and feels compelled to accept it owing to its priority over the other names. 
To add to the confusion, Waite [Rec. Cant. Mus., vol. 1, p. 53), has by an 
evident slip of the pen written “A. retzius ” in place of “ L. regius ” in 
referring to this fish. 
The constant complaint against these purists in nomenclature, these 
diggers into prehistoric literature or into journals that have had no great 
circulation among zoologists, is that they cannot let well alone. They 
accept only too readily the statement of some investigator of this 
stamp, and change the name at once. It comes about that in each of 
Waite’s lists of fishes alterations in the specific and generic names occur 
frequently. 
This particular fish has been called Lampris luna almost universally 
and uninterruptedly in text-books on systematic zoology, in books dealing 
especially with fishes, in books on natural history, and so on, for more than 
a hundred years (with occasional lapses into guttatus or regius by individual 
systematists), and in order to decide which of these three names really should 
be used, seeing that they were each published in the same year, 1788, 
one would have to ascertain the precise month, or possibly the day of 
the month, or of the week perhaps, in order to establish definitely the 
priority of this or that name—the real date, that is, on which the name 
was “ published ” to the world. The difficulty is evident when Gill takes 
one view and Goode and Beane another. And all the time waiting for 
some industrious bookworm to unearth it from its tomb in some rare work 
was the still earlier title pelagicus. 
No real purpose has been served by this meticulous accuracy in adhering 
to the letter of the law of priority : nothing is gained by changing a well- 
established name in this case, for the fish occupies an isolated position in 
the system whether it be called L. luna or L. pelagicus. 
Where doctors differ in this way (that is, Gill and the others) the layman 
feels hopelessly at sea—the curator of a museum, the teacher of zoology, the 
investigator in other groups of animals, is the layman in this case—and it 
is a mighty annoying business to follow the shifting nomenclature in the 
various groups with which he has to deal. He knows that it is necessary 
in many cases, as he has to do it himself perhaps in his own little 
watertight compartment of investigation, and it usually does not matter. 
It is only when one comes across some peculiar creature or one that is 
of special or general interest to zoologists that the matter troubles him. 
