90 [September, 1841. 



descriptions thus put forth, are entitled to and should receive the 

 sanction, and be adopted, throughout the scientific world. 



In contradistinction to this, your committee are aware that there 

 exists an opinion, that an author might claim precedence, from the 

 time his discoveries were read before a scientific society, and with- 

 out reference at all to the time of printing or general circulation. 

 But this seems to your committee, a very uncertain and vague expe- 

 dient, the source of perpetual embarrassment and confusion; and much 

 of the retardation of the spread of knowledge maybe attributed to this 

 cause. Many societies issue their transactions through the press at 

 long intervals, months, even years, elapse before their discoveries 

 reach the public : thus, it seems to your committee, manifestly 

 unjust, that other collaborators should await such tardy enunciations 

 of scientific knowledge, and so hazard the loss of their labour, and 

 that too, by acts, even farther removed from their control, than are 

 the periods, or the means of publication of the transactions of such 

 societies, from the influence of their own members. 



Your committee deem it inexpedient at this time to extend their 

 observations ; enough, in their opinion, having been adduced to 

 warrant their conclusion that the most obvious and rational cri- 

 terion by which to test the merits of conflicting claims to originality, 

 is solely, the printed and published testimony. 



In relation to that portion of Mr. Phillips's communication, 

 which alludes to the modifications and changes in the designation of 

 genera and species made in new nomenclatures, without assigning 

 credit, where it is justly merited, thus wresting from the natu- 

 ralist the honour acquired by his oftentimes onerous and unrequited 

 toil, your committee trust, that the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia, will sustain them in an expression of decided dis- 

 approbation of a practice, so fraught with evil, doing injury alike 

 to science, and to its collaborators. 



Edward Hallowell. 



B. H. Coates, 



C. A. Poulson. 



