Smith and Dyar

[Doug Yanega]

>While we're on names, does anyone know the "real" story....
>
>I read years ago that Dyar names a creature "corpulentis" after his
>"enemy" John B. Smith who was of rotund dimension.
>
>Smith is said to have responded by naming something "dyaria". I always
>used this as an example, but recently read an article which said that
>was not true.
>
>I hate to lose a good story, particularly because Smith was quite a
>legend around Rutgers, a mere century ago.

That's only because it wasn't Smith who named the genus - or, possibly, he
did, but it was preoccupied! I don't know the "real story", but Dyaria
Meumoegen, 1893 probably predates Smith, and the rules being what they are,
even if Smith actually published another "Dyaria" it would have been sunk
as a homonym. The tale may yet be true, though the name might be invalid.
Or, it may have been Meumoegen who felt a need to insult Dyar.


Doug Yanega       Dept. of Entomology           Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315
                http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82