266 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



from each other. Still worse is the indubitable fact that his own judg- 

 ment varies. What seems to him well-established at one time may a few 

 months later be incredible, not so much because of new facts bearing on 

 the matter, but because his horizon has enlarged or his point of view 

 become fundamentally changed. As long as nature and human judg- 

 ment are what they are, it is hopeless to look for perfect stability even 

 in as artificial a thing as nomenclature, except by arbitrary decisions 

 adopted by practically unanimous consent. No code can be devised 

 which will meet all the needs of the case, and most zoologists will con- 

 tinue to call a holothurian a holothurian in spite of the codes, until it 

 is arbitrarily agreed to call it something else. I can not see that the 

 proposed substitution of numbers for names would tend to either greater 

 simplicity, intelligibility or stability. The difficulty is not with the 

 names we have given, but with the objects we have named and the 

 judgments which interpret our definitions. Recognizing then these 

 two fundamental difficulties at the very base of systematic work, I ven- 

 ture to suggest a few principles which would, I think, if universally 

 adopted, increase the clarity and stability of our results. They are 

 more or less generally accepted even now, and I claim no originality in 

 setting them forth. I only hope their formulation may lead to more 

 extended recognition. The first one may be expressed thus : 



Naming and describing new species and correcting nomenclatural 

 errors, while valuable and indeed essential, is frankly the most elemen- 

 tary and hence the lowest form of zoology. 



The zoologist who, like myself, enjoys collections and finds an un- 

 ceasing interest in the diversity of animal forms, very easily overlooks 

 this principle, though he will rarely question it when fairly stated. He 

 will grant that after all, names are but handles by which the ever- 

 increasing number of animal units may be shifted and turned and made 

 use of in zoological building, and he will probably admit that the handle 

 is not so important as the unit. It would be well if we went further and 

 acted on the principle that the smoother a handle is and the more 

 perfectly it is adapted to its object, the better and more usable it is. A 

 clumsy name or a meaningless name or a name that has no natural 

 and inherent association with the object is not a desirable name, for it 

 is not a well-formed handle. This is why, in my judgment, the use of 

 the names of persons for zoological units is to be deplored. They rarely 

 have any inherent association with the object, and after a short time 

 they have no significance whatever. Any one looking at the animal 

 can see why a certain oddly shaped sand-dollar was called Rotula 

 dentata, but how many of us know who Eumphius was that the same 

 animal should have been called by another writer Rotula rumphii? 

 The use of place-names has more justification, especially for insular or 

 local forms, but it has led to many meaningless or misleading names 



