2 Nomenclature of Organic Life. [ ZOE 
The beginning of classification is, undoubtedly, that assemblage 
of forms having a common and not too distant origin, and ulti- 
mately reproducing itself, subject to variation by environment, 
which we are accustomed to consider an entity and call ‘‘species,’’ 
and if priority is to have any force or meaning it must commence 
here with the name proper of the organism. The practice which 
has had, and still has, some notable followers, of changing specific 
names at will, whenever it was thought necessary to alter their 
grouping, tends to obscure their identity and render it doubly dif- 
ficult to trace them through the changes of genera, without offering 
any compensating benetit. The only valid reason which-can be 
given for changing a specific name is the existence in the same 
genus of an identical older one, and even then the change should 
not be made without a most critical examination of the affected spe- 
cies, for it may easily happen that after a whole series of duplicate 
specific names have been changed in consequence of the merging 
of two or more genera, many of the so-called species may be proved 
to be mere forms, and not entitled to names, and unnecessary con- 
fusion will have resulted from the hasty action of some individual 
inspired with no higher motive than attaching his name to species. 
Genera form a secondary step—they presuppose the existence of 
species ; and it naturally follows from this view that in cases where 
at first, as with many Linnzean names, only one word was applied to 
a species, it should have remained the specific name, and not have 
been altered in rank, although the practice of Linnzeus seems 
usually to have been the reverse. 
It has happened, curiously enough, that priority in generic names 
has been much more respected than in specific ones, perhaps as a 
sort of compensation for their mutations in boundaries, yet they do 
not escape ; and one of the most flagrant violations of the rule—en- ~ 
tirely, however, without those elements of vanity and meanness 
which so frequently figure in these changes—has been often men- 
tioned in my hearing. It was the act of the eminent botanist Ben- 
tham, and was, in effect, a claim that both generic and specific 
names might be changed for very trivial reasons—for no principle 
has been better established than that which tules that an author 
shall have no more power over a name once published than any 
other person. He published a genus of Californian plants founded 
on a single species which he named Adenostegia rigida; but subse- 
