On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 07:52:57PM +1000, Carl Clifford wrote:
> Dear old Dr. John Latham is to blame. He named the bird in his
> "Supplementum indicis ornithologici sive systematis ornithologiae" in
> 1802. Unfortunately Dr. Latham never voyaged as far as the Antipodes (I
> don't think he ever left England), and had to rely on specimens supplied
> by others, which would undoubtedly have been collected from along the
> southern NSW and Tasmanian east coasts, and named them eponymously from
> their collection location. It is a pity that not much was known about
> what lived west of Bass Strait at that time, otherwise Larus p. might
> very well have ended up with a very much different name if he knew the
> true distribution.
Latham described Pacific Gull, and quite a few other Australian species,
from a drawing by Thomas Watling (linked below). Watling was transported
for forgery and assigned to the surgeon and naturalist John White.
White left Australia before Bass&Flinders began their explorations south
and Watling gives an aboriginal name, so it was likely drawn from a bird
seen or collected near Sydney.
Andrew
http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/nature-online/first-fleet/nathist.dsml?sa=1&lastDisp=list&beginIndex=198
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
