176 [May, 1S42. 



In accordance with a suggestion from the Chairman, it was 

 then on motion, 



Resolved, That Prof. Locke have permission to take casts 

 of the Fossils now in the Collection of the Academy. 



MEETING FOR BUSINESS, May 31, 1S42. 



Vice President Morton in the Chair. 



The Report of the Corresponding Secretary for the last 

 month was read and adopted. 



The Committee to whom was referred the following com- 

 munication from Mr. S. S. Haideman, read Feb. 1, 1842, re- 

 ported in favour of publication in the Proceedings of the 

 Academy. 



A spirit of selfishness has crept into Zoology, which looks rather to the advan- 

 tage of the individual, than to the advancement of ihe science ; and authors, with 

 the former point in view, have invented various methods to carry out the princi- 

 ple ; and, what is worse, authority brings those to practice them, who would 

 have been shocked at the idea of using them in the first instance. Among these, 

 I count the practice of citing one's own name for a genus or species founded by 

 another, on the strength of varying a single letter, or even the gender. Examples 

 of this occur in the writings of Rafinesque. If this is proper, a printer may as- 

 sume the authoiship of a book in which he finds and corrects grammatical errors. 

 Admit the principal that Unio metanevra, Kaf. shall be called U. metannever, 

 Lea : and the French will have our own authority to assume almost every species 

 of American Unio, because they consider them as of the feminine gender, whilst 

 they have been described here as masculine ; and any one not a botanist, may 

 place the species of Potamogston (heretofore considered neuter) in the feminine 

 gender to which it belongs, as has been ascertained from a passage in Pliny. 



Having recently looked over the list of American Unionidffi, I wish to propose 

 a few corrections in nomenclature, before they arc made, and the species appro- 

 priated abroad, by someone who will not cite the original desciiber. A western con- 

 cbologist gives all the species of Alasmodon to Mr. Lea, not because he was the 

 first to name them, to create thegenu, or to place them in it; but because he places 

 them in the same genus with those who first described them, but under a differ- 



