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Cinnyricinclus leucogaster verreauxi (Bocage, 1870) (1 Viewer)

Taphrospilus

Well-known member
Is the author really Bocage for Cinnyricinclus leucogaster verreauxi as in here or OD here. I do not see in which litearture (in litt.) Bocage mentioned this name? How do we have to rate that against the code?
 
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No Author can read (or find) every single book, paper, journal, etc., ever written on either subject. Somtetimes he/she have to rely on (trustworthy) friends, colleauges and simply belive what they have written/corresponded (in litteris).

A fact/name could surely have been published somewhere (and as such making it valid), in this context only forwarded/corresponded to the Author in litt. (in litteris), like (for example) what we´ve been doing/finding in the Bird Name Etymology subforum (where some additions/suppliers of "unseen" OD's or other unknown etymologies ended up as "in litt." in James's Key), while a fact/name in MS (in manuscript) indicate that a fact/name never have been published, but was/is (hopefully) about to be (in a forthcoming book/paper). Note that several in litt. is based on in MS.

A manuscript (in MS) is a work in progress, all the way till it´s been published, and as such it can change (as long as the Author of it is still alive). A manuscript is not a complete text, not to rely on (until published), belive me, my MS evolves just about every day. A letter is what it is. It says what it says.

And, of course, both could be wrong. Or the opposite.
 
I absolutely agree a letter and/or correspondence is not a living document as a manuscript. But why accepts the code in above case Bocage as author and not Finsch and Hartlaub while in other examples we have seen in Bird Name Etymology subforum with ms or mss it is the author published the article/book and not the mentioned author of the ms.

In both cases we as consumers do not know if the name was mentioned in the letter and/or ms (revision used by the author).
 
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Must be somethinkg like this:

The name is attributed to Gould and the descriptive text appears to be quoted from his MS ("Mr. Gould describes it as follows:-- "[description]""), thus I see no problem with Gould being the author.
(It would have been different if S&S had written their own description using information from Gould's MS; in this case, they would have been the authors of the name.)

But sometimes you see a bird descrition with e.g. Gould Mss. and the author(s) are the ones of the article and not Gould. Couldn't find any example yet. Unfortunately no of Deppes description contain Lichtenstein Mss. But even there is written under Bemerkungen about a possible future publication Prodomus Faunae mexicanae of Lichtenstein and it could be interpreted as the manuscript of Prodomus Faunae mexicanaewas used for Deppes Preisliste.
 
So far as I understand from the OD, the bird was found in Benguela by Anchieta, who sent specimen(s) to the Lisbon Museum; from there, Bocage then forwarded 'a nice male' to Finsch and/or Hartlaub for comparison with their own material.
Presumably the name travelled to Germany with this specimen, in an accompanying letter (and/or possibly written on the specimen label). If the Germans had a specimen, they certainly had the necessary material to write their own description; the published description is not in quotes, or attributed explicitly to Bocage; this description does not appear to differ significantly in style from the other descriptions of the work; it is written in German; it describes only the male and gives a single set of measurements (in German units), which are presumably those of the bird sent to Germany. In all likelihood, this description was authored by F&H.

I fail to see what might justify attributing this taxon to Bocage under the current rules.
 
Thank you Laurent. You are more than close to my intuitive thoughts and of course supported this with facts and more skills about the code.
 
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