PRINCIPLES, CANONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 51 



8. Of the Emendation of Names. 



CANON XL. The original orthography of a name is to be 

 rigidly preserved, unless a typographical error is evident. 



REMARKS. In view of the fact that stability of names is one of the es- 

 sential principles in nomenclature, and that the emendation of names, as 

 shown by the recent history of zoological nomenclature, opens the door to a 

 great evil, being subject to abuse on the part of purists and classicists, 

 who look with disfavor upon anything nomenclatural which is in the least 

 degree unclassical in form, it seems best that correctness of structure, or 

 philological propriety, be held as of minor importance, and yield place to the 

 two cardinal principles of priority and fixity. The permanence of a name is 

 of far more importance than its signification or structure, as is freely ad- 

 mitted by the best authorities in both Botany and Zoology. Your Committee 

 would therefore restrict the emendation of names to the correction of obvi- 

 ous or known typographical errors involving obscurity. They would there- 

 fore reject emendations of a purely philological character, and especially all 

 such as involve a change of the initial letter of the name, as in cases where 

 the Greek aspirate has been omitted by the original constructor. It there- 

 fore follows that hybrid names cannot be displaced ; although it is to be 

 hoped that they will be strenuously guarded against in future ; and that, 

 in general, word-coiners will pay the closest attention to philological pro- 

 prieties. 



" The tendency among working naturalists is to retain names in spite of 

 faults." (A. GRAY.) 



" A generic name should subsist just as it was made, although a purely 

 typographical error may be corrected." (DE CANDOLLE.) 



9. Of the Definition of Names. 



CANON XLI. A name to be tenable must have been defined 

 and published. 



REMARKS. "Unless a species or group is intelligibly defined when the 

 name is given, it cannot be recognized by others, and the signification of the 

 name is consequently lost Definition properly implies a distinct ex- 

 position of essential characters, and in all cases we conceive this to be indis- 

 pensable, although some authors maintain that a mere enumeration of the 

 component species, or even of a single type, is sufficient to authenticate a 

 genus." (B. A. Code, 1842.) 



Any tenable technical name is called the onym, as distinguished from an 



