6 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 



favoured intellectually, and generally with disease of the liver, 

 drunkards, or illiterates ; the second column contains the names 

 evolved by scientific men of an ordinary intelligence, who do not often 

 suffer from cirrhosis, who do not get intoxicated, and who possess 

 great erudition. 



" Oiseau — mouche a gorge bleue Caligene de Clemence. 



a poitrine couleur de vin. Lamproleme de Rham. 



a queue de poisson. . . Chlorostilbon de Canivet. 



violet grand Trochile d'Alexandre. 



bleueaqueued'hirondelle. Tilmature de Dupont." 



Professor Herrera thinks that if the Latin name were invariably 

 compounded to have a meaning, such as the blue-throated humming- 

 bird, it would be much more intelligible and instructive than if it were 

 called after " Mademoiselle Clemence " or " Monsieur Dupont." 



He also calls the attention of systematists to the inconvenience 

 caused by not retaining one termination for certain groups ; for 

 instance, he quotes Malherbe's nomenclature of the Picidae, in which 

 the termination of every generic name ends in picos or picus, whereas 

 in that of Swainson each genus is a distinct and unconnected word. 

 He further emphasises his remark by asking how many scientific men 

 outside the systematists of the group understand what is meant by 

 Spinolis zena? Is it a mushroom, an ant, a rose, a spider, or a 

 monkey ? 



We quite agree with Professor Herrera that the procedure of 

 naming forms might be thus simplified, could we begin over again ; 

 naturally Professor Herrera shrinks from such a drastic remedy, since, 

 as we already have a nomenclature extending over some 140 years, we 

 must accept it, and, to our way of thinking, the only method of clear- 

 ing the ground is to adopt strict priority in every instance. This, if 

 persisted in conscientiously, must eliminate the endless synonyms 

 now existing. But the obstacles in the way of even this rational 

 method are very great ; specialists cannot agree among themselves as 

 to whether a form belongs to this genus or to that, and this point is 

 well brought out in Herrera's own paper. He quotes ninety-five 

 authors who have written on Alauda cristata, and shows that this bird 

 has been put alternately into Alauda and into Galerita by almost each 

 successive writer. Now, if diagnoses of genera are any good at all, 

 it is either an Alauda or a Galerita; there should be no dispute, and 

 all we can gather from Herrera's table is that generic descriptions are 

 so vague that no one can decide to which genus the bird belongs. 



There are many other points in this amusing paper which we 

 should like to quote had we the space, but we must content ourselves 

 with noting one crowning absurdity quoted by Herrera — that of 

 Enema gonzalezi, on which he remarks, " Quelle politesse dans le 

 langage de la science ! Quels termes bien appropries et distingues ! " 

 As evidence of the lamentable work done in the past in over- 

 loading science with useless names, Herrera gives a table of names 



