14 LEAFLETS. 
The Logic of It. 
At page 142 of the Third Volume of Torreya one reads a 
sort of diatribe against a man in Italy who has lately not only 
perpetrated some duplicate binary names in zöology, but also 
shown himself unaware of the circumstance that such a thing 
had been done before. 
I have no sympathy with narrow provinciality and ignorance 
—though it occurs in many places outside of Italy—and I quite 
enjoy the keen rebuke administered to that malacographer, and 
to some other people nearer home, by the writer in Torreya. 
At the same time I wonder why the critic did not take his mala- 
cologist to task for another piece of innocency which, if less 
ridiculous, is more dangerous. I refer to his assertion, as quoted 
by the critic, that these duplicate names result from his having 
retained the “ original Linnean names for the species, though 
these may have been chosen to denote the genus.” The man evi- 
dently thinks that these appellations which he has been doubling 
np came into existence there in the margins of the Linnzan 
pages as species names, and were afterwards placed in the rank 
of generic names; while the fact is that not one such name is 
original with Linneus. They all existed as genus names before 
Linnezus. 
Now such an inversion of history as this Mediterranean mala- 
cologist makes in calling them “ original Linnæan names ” seems 
to me the really reprehensible fault in this paper as quoted. 
Why is this expression of a palpable untruth allowed to pass 
unscathed? Is it perchance needful in order to secure currency 
for these Car cat, Dog dog, names, that one should try to keep 
alive the moribund faith in that mythical Linneus in whom our 
forefathers believed, who was supposed to have been the origi- 
nal author and promulgator of a scientific nomenclature for 
groups of living entities? Is some survival of this myth to ac- 
count for the critic’s silence as to this error ? 
Some dozen years ago, I was told by an aged gentleman that his 
father, a New York naturalist at the beginning of the nineteenth 
