U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
BIOLOGICAL SURVEY 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
December 10 . 1896. 
Mr. William Brewster, 
Cambridge, Mass. 
Dear Brewster: 
The Committee on Nomenclature, consisting of' Coues, Ridgway, 
and myself, has been in session all day, and in several instances has 
reversed the decisions arrived at by the Committee at its Cambridge 
meeting. 
For instance, at the Cambridge meeting, when T was not pres¬ 
ent, the name Dryobate s montanus Jnthony was considered as not pre¬ 
occupied by Picus montanu s Brehm, although the latter is conceded by- 
ail to be a Dryobate s. The Cambridge ruling is a direct violation of 
Canon 33 (page 47) of our^ode, which states: *A specific or subspe¬ 
cific name is to be changed when it has been applied to some other 
species of the same genus, or used previously in combination with the 
same generic name*. You will see at once that this Canon provides 
for two distinct classes of casesf tk\ in which the name has been 
used for another species of the same genus (which is the case in 
point), and when it has been used in combination with the same 
gene ric name . The vote of the Committee on this point today was 
unanimous; any other ruling must be in violation of our own code. 
