513 
our common blue violet under the name Viola palmata L., var. 
cucullata Gray, because he admitted the necessity of taking up an 
older name if the plant should be given specific rank, saying: 
“ Viola cucullata Ait. ought to have been referred, as an entire- 
leaved variety, to the Linnaean Viola palmata. I am the more 
constrained to do so now by the fact that the name cucullata 
would have to give way to the much earlier published V. odligua 
Hill, well figured and unmistakable in his Hortus Kewensis.”"* 
Dr. David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford Univer- 
sity and a well-known ichthyologist has said, “ There are only 
two ways of naming plants or animals, either to give them their 
oldest names or to give them any names you please.”+ Not- 
withstanding the general agreement among zodlogists to the 
principle of the Stricklandian code it was found difficult to en- 
force these principles unanimously, and in 1876 the question came 
up afresh at the Buffalo meeting of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, and a new and slightly modified 
code which had been drawn by Professor Dall was adopted one 
year later.t It deals largely with the multitudinous details of 
zological science and makes no concessions, but holds the gen- 
eral law of priority as the basis of all sound nomenclature, which 
is there reénacted and amplified. This code is now, I believe, 
almost unanimously enforced by zodlogists within the United 
States. 
It does not, however, seem to have covered the case of orni- 
thology, and the ornithologists were still in the worst possible con- 
dition in relation to the multiplication of names. At last, losing, 
as it would seem, all patience with the system in vogue, they met, 
and bya unanimous action of the American Ornithologists’ Union 
the most stringent code of nomenclature was adopted that has 
ever been proposed. This is known as the code of nomenclature 
of the American Ornithologists’ Union, published in 1886. The 
ornithologists had the advantage of perfect unanimity, which is 
one of the most important conditions to making any code a com- 
plete success. The condition of affairs that prevailed before this 
*Asa Gray, Botanical Gazette, 11: 254. 1886. 
+Botanical Gazette, 20: 163. 1895. 
tProc. A. A. A. S., 26: 1877. Appendix. 
