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Seebohm/Sharpe, Monograph of the Turdidae

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CVII

CXI

Merula olivatra.

CXII

Plate CXIII

Merula euryzona.

Philip Lutley Sclater and Osbert Salvin (The Ibis, 1871) argued that the scientific name Merula euryzona was the same species as one which Sclater alone had published 14 years earlier (Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1857 [1858])--Turdus fulviventris. As the name euryzona was taken from a series of unpublished drawings ("tab. 34") from around the year 1850 (1845 in Seebohm, Cat. B. Brit Mus., vol. V) by Bernard du Bus [de Gisignies], Esquisses Ornithologiques, Sclater and Salvin favored it over the latter. "We are not sure that [D]u Bus's plate was ever really published; but as it exists in the Zoological Society's copy of this work, we give [D]u Bus's name priority." However, Sclater's name, the type specimen of which had likewise been figured in The Ibis (1861, pl. viii), ultimately prevailed as the first published name for this species of thrush. Charles Hellmayr (Catalogue of Birds of the Americas.., Volume XIII, part VII) notes that only the first twenty of du Bus de Gisignies' unpublished plates of were ever issued. Hellmayr suggests that the actual sketch of euryzona cannot be traced; however, Newton (A Dictionary of Birds (1896)), wrote: "Simultaneously with this Du Bus began a work on a plan precisely similar [Des Murs' Iconographie Ornithologique], the Esquisses Ornithologiques, illustrated by Severyns, which, however, stopped short in 1849 with its 37th plate, while the letterpress unfortunately does not go beyond that belonging to the 20th." A Dictionarty of Birds, Alfred Newton, 1896. Adam and Charles Black, London.