[Taxacom] John Edward Gray (1800-1875)

[Barry Roth]

Ken,

Do you you make that judgment of his taxonomic practice as "balanced" with respect to the practice of his contemporaries, or as seen in the light of the modern data base?  "Both," of course, is a plausible answer, because the two are different matters. 

Barry



On Jun 5, 2011, at 9:44 PM, kennethkinman at webtv.net (Kenneth Kinman) wrote:

> Hi Richard and Andy,
>        Although John Edward Gray concentrated heavily on molluscs and
> reptiles in his early years, he expanded his interests into mammals once
> he was promoted to the head curator of zoology at the British Museum.
> Whales and dolphins seem to have become a major interest particularly at
> the generic level (quite a number of currently recognized cetacean
> genera were named by him).  He described Eschrichtius as a separate
> genus, but not as a separate family as others did in the 20th Century.            
>       So I would say that he tended to take a middle ground approach
> when it came to splitting versus lumping (even though a number of his
> cetacean species were later reduced to synonymy within in other species,
> but I wouldn't regard him as being an excessive splitter of species
> compared to some other mammalogists of his time). If he discovered new
> species of birds, he apparently usually let his younger brother take
> care of describing those.  So I have a rather positive view of his
> contributions to mammalogy, naming a good number of new genera
> (especially in the Cetacea), but not doing so excessively.  Generally a
> balanced approach in my opinion.  
>          ----------Ken
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Mabbett wrote:
> 
> On 5 June 2011 18:11, Richard Petit <r.e.petit at att.net> wrote: 
>> Having just compiled a list of John Edward Gray's >molluscan
> publications and 
>> a list of his molluscan taxa, I would like to know how his >work on
> other 
>> Phyla is regarded.  Any comments on his work, or >references to
> published 
>> articles in which the quality of his work is addressed, >will be most 
>> appreciated. 
> I wrote this: 
>      http://www.rspb-walsall.org.uk/gray/ 
> and did some work on: 
>      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Gray 
> and shall be interested to see what you discover. Perhaps you could
> update the Wikipedia article? 
> -- 
> Andy Mabbett 
> 
> 
> 
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