AO = 
A BIOLOGICAL FOURNAL. 
MARCH, 1890. No. 1. 
VoL. |. 
THE NOMENCLATURE OF ORGANIC LIFE. 
BY H. W. HARKNESS. 
To facilitate the study of the natural sciences and avoid confusion, 
it is important that no two species shall have an identical name. 
No department of science, so far as I am aware, has laid down 
the rule that such names are not admissible, though all discourage 
them. They exist at present in large numbers, and in departments 
which have an unusually intimate connection with the vegetable 
world, as in the case of entomology, are productive of considerable 
inconvenience, requiring at the least the suffix Bot. or Ent. to the 
name. 
They exist, also, though only in inconsiderable number in bot- 
any, as between phanerogamic and cryptogamic—especially fungi— 
but with the impending reductions of genera will probably nearly 
or entirely cease. 
_ Their consideration, which should be preceded by conscientious 
revisions, may seriously affect the nomenclature of all branches of 
"biological science, as the tendency undoubtedly is to make the law 
of priority absolute throughout the organic world. 
In a more restricted sense, the question, though necessarily of 
equal interest to all, is now raging with especial virulence in the de- 
partment of phanerogamic botany, and has developed in some 
quarters a regrettable amount of bitterness. 
The rigid enforcement of the law of priority seems to give the 
best promise of a stable nomenclature—a boon so precious that even 
a very considerable preliminary confusion may well be endured in 
the prospect of attaining it. To be in any degree effectual, it should 
_ be enforced without any of those exceptions upon which systematists 
soonest and most completely split. 
