Re: Bursatella leachii or Bursatella leachi?

November 21, 2008
From: Fabio Crocetta

Concerning message #22066:

Dear Bill,
Thank you for your answer. I found the Cuvier Dictionary and I saw that Cuvier reported that de Blainville described the species as Bursatella leachii in another paper, does anybody have this paper to see the original spelling?

Otherwise if the species was described in the Cuvier dictionary the correct author should be: "de Blainville in Cuvier, 1817" ?

Fabio Crocetta

fabiocrocetta@alice.it

Crocetta, F., 2008 (Nov 21) Re: Bursatella leachii or Bursatella leachi?. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/22070

Dear Fabio,
Many of these early works leave problems for later workers. Authorship and dates of publication were often unclear. In some cases large monographs were published in unnumbered 'parts' over a number of years, as finance became available. Libraries and book buyers bound these parts into single volume when all the parts were received and there is no printed indication when each part was actually published. Discovering when each part was actually published often requires detective work such as looking at date stamps in libraries, checking references to the work in other publications etc..

Cuvier's famous dictionary was published over 40 years, and although he was chief supervising editor, each entry was individually authored by an expert. For example all the entries prepared by de Blainville have (De B.) at the end. In the case of Bursatella, instead of saying "I' named this species, he says 'M. de Blainville' named this species. There is a tradition in scientific writing to use this 'third person' approach. It is why you often see "the author thinks bla bla bla" instead of the more normal "I think bla bla bla". There is no doubt that de Blainville is the author of the entry on Bursatella.
 
Concerning whether we should cite authorship as 'de Blainville in Cuvier'. I have perhaps confused the issue by adding Cuvier as editor in my citation. Usually entries in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles .. are cited as though it is a scientific journal - with no mention of the editor. I have checked back to Neave's Nomenclator Zoologicus, which is the standard list of all generic names, and they do not include Cuvier in the citation. I would recommend you do what I have done and include Cuvier as editor, in the bibliographic citation but not in the authorship of the name.
 
One other question you asked is whether there is an earlier use of the name Bursatella leachii. De Blainville does say he established the name in an article entitled Mollusques in a supplement of l'Encyclopédie britannique. I can't find any reference to that article, so my best guess is that it was never published or was published later. Publishing in the early 19th century was chaotic and it is possible that when de Blainville prepared his entry for the Dictionary he thought the one in the Encyclopedia would be out first, but printer's plans or publisher's funds may have upset that. I assume the 'l'Encyclopédie britannique' he refers to is the enormous Encyclopaedia Britannica whose first edition was published 1768- 1771. In the time frame we are interested in there was a 'Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions'  being  prepared and printed. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica website "This six-volume supplement appeared in half-volumes from 1815 to 1824 and contained original signed contributions written by the most distinguished British scholars of the day, as well as some French scholars". It is possible de Blainville published 'Bursatella' or 'Bursatella leachii' in that Supplement, but I can find no reference to it. You would need to find a copy and check it.
 
Finally I made an error myself in citing this article. In the Dictionary available to me, Volume 5 [BOA-BYT] has 480 pages and then there is another 160 pages also covering more words starting BOA-BYT. These extra pages are identified as Supplement 5. 'Bursatella' is on p138 of the Supplement. Some references just cite Supplement 5 and not Vol 5. Some other early volumes of the Dictionary have a similar supplement which appears to be published simultaneously with the volume. Since it is not clear that there is a supplement attached to these volumes, I think it is best to cite the reference as:
  • de Blainville, H. M. D., 1817. [In] Cuvier F. (ed.)   Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles dans lequel on traite méthodiquement des différens êtres de la nature... Levrault & Le Normant: Paris. Vol. 5, Supplement 5: p. 138.
Hope that makes sense.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2008 (Nov 21). Comment on Re: Bursatella leachii or Bursatella leachi? by Fabio Crocetta. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/22070

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