THE CLASSIFICATION OF FISHES. n 



genus or species the first name applied to it and no other. The first 

 name, once properly given is sacred because it is the right name. All 

 other later names, whatever their appropriateness in meaning, are 

 wrong names in taxonomy. In science, of necessity, a name is a name 

 without any necessary signification. For this reason and for the further 

 avoidance of confusion, it should remain as it was originally spelled by 

 the author, obvious misprints aside, regardless of all possible errors in 

 classical form or meaning. This rule is now generally adopted in 

 America, because attempts at classical purism have simply produced 

 confusion. The names in use are properly written in Latin or in 

 latinized Greek, the Greek forms being usually preferred as generic 

 names, the Latin adjectives for names of species. Many species are 

 named in honor of individuals, these names bearing usually the termina- 

 tion of the Latin genitive, as Sebastodes gillii, Liparis agassizi. In 

 recent custom all specific names in zoology are written with the small 

 initial; all generic names with the capital. 



One class of exceptions must be made to the law of priority. No 

 generic name can be used twice among animals, and no specific name 

 twice in the same genus. Thus the name Didbasis has to be set aside 

 in favor of the next name, Hcemulon, because Diahasis was earlier 

 used for a genus of beetles. The specific name, Pristipoma humile, is 

 abandoned, because there was already a humile in the genus Pristipoma. 



In the system of Linnseus, a genus corresponded roughly to the 

 modern conception of a family. Most of the primitive genera con- 

 tained a great variety of forms, as well as usually some species be- 

 longing to other groups dissociated from their real relationships. 



As greater numbers of species have become known, the earlier genera 

 have undergone subdivision until in the modern systems almost any 

 structural character not subject to intergradation and capable of exact 

 definition is held to distinguish a genus. As the views of the value of 

 characters are undergoing constant change, and as different writers look 

 upon them from different points of view, or with different ideas of 

 convenience, we must have constant changes in the boundaries of gen- 

 era. This brings constant changes in the scientific names, although the 

 same specific name should be used whatever the generic name to which 

 it may be attached. We may illustrate these changes and the 'burden 

 of synonymy' as well by a concrete example. The horned trunk-fish or 

 cuckold of the West Indies was first recorded by Lister in 1686 in the 

 descriptive phrase above quoted. Artedi in 1738 recognized that it 

 belonged with other trunk-fishes in a group he called Ostracion treating 

 the word as a Latin masculine although derived from a Greek neuter 

 diminutive {darpaxiov, a small box). This, to be strictly classic, he 

 should have written Ostracium, but he preferred a partly Greek form 

 to the Latin one. In the Nagg's Head Inn in London, Artedi saw a 



