Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 255 ON THE QUESTION WHETHER THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF A DIACRITIC MARK SHOULD BE HELD TO MAKE TWO NAMES CONSISTING OF OTHERWISE IDENTICAL WORDS DISTINCT NAMES FOR THE PUR-POSES OF THE LAW OF HOMONYMY By ERNST MAYR (The American Museum of Natural History, New York) (Commission's reference Z.N.(S.)538) (Extract from a letter dated 31st October 1951) Bull. ZOOl. Nomencl., vol. 6, page 114 : 1 strongly endorse Dr. Stubblefield's opinion. There are two kinds of diacritical marks, one to indicate that two succes-sive vowels be pronounced separately rather than as a diphthong, the second one to indicate in certain languages that the vowel with which is associated is an entirely different sound than the vowel without the diacritical mark. The latter kind of diacritical mark is, in a manner of speaking, part of the vowel and makes the total a very different letter. For these reasons it would be incorrect to equate 6 with o. In the case cited by Dr. Helen Muir-Wood no possible confusion can arise since the two generic names refer to forms belonging to different phyla of animals and occurring at totally different geological times. To equate o and 6 would set a precedent which might well lead to widespread and most undesirable name changing. ON THE PROBLEM OF THE STATUS OF NAMES PUB-LISHED BY SCOPOLI IN 1777 IN HIS " INTRODUCTIO AD HISTORIAM NATURALEM " By GEORGE S. MYERS (Stanford University, Natural History Museum, Stanford, California, U.S.A.) (Commission's reference Z.N.(S.)587) (Extract from a letter dated 29th January, 1952) I have noticed in a recent issue of the Bulletin a discussion (Hemming, 1951, Bull. zool. Nomencl. 6 (4) : 122-125) a discussion of some of the generic names proposed by Scopoli, 1777, Introductio ad Historiam naturalem. It seemed to me that some feeling was shown that Scopoli should be nomenclaturally outlawed. This would be catastrophic in ichthyology, where the outlawing of Scopoli's names would mean the replacement of a number of very important generic names. The more important Scopolian fish names are : *Liparis, * Umbra, *Clarias, Percis, *Anableps, *Pholis, *Erythrintts, *Ano8tomus, *Mastacembelvs, *Synodus, Mysttis, *Channa, *Holocentrus, *Callichthys, *Gonorhynchus, Aspredo, *Alhula, *Charax. An asterisk indicates that the name is the type genus of a currently recognized family. Some of these families are large and important.
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