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NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No 50. Vol. VIII. APRIL, 1896. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Zoological Nomenclature. 



IN our next Note, we attempt to express, so far as we can at 

 all agree with them, the views of the younger and, perhaps, 

 extremer advocates of reform in nomenclature. In these columns, 

 from time to time, we have urged the necessity of immediate and 

 concerted action, and it was with a lively gratitude that we regarded 

 the action of Mr. Sclater in raising the question at a meeting of the 

 Zoological Society. The attitudes of the extreme conservatives and 

 of the keen reformers are to our mind alike inevitable and undesirable. 

 Those who have been accustomed through years of laborious work to 

 particular names not unnaturally magnify the evil of change. Those 

 who have more recently entered upon systematic work, and who find 

 that a great part of their time is absorbed, not by science, but by 

 hunting through a confused synonymy that varies practically with 

 every country and with every worker, have seized upon the principle 

 of priority as a court from which there can be no appeal. The worst of 

 it is that many of these workers, seduced by the idea of finality, 

 have made the hunting of original names an end in itself, and have 

 believed themselves to be advancing science when they were only 

 adding to its confusion. 



We hold that the disputants of either side were wrong in trying 

 to appeal to principle. There is no principle involved in the matter ; 

 only the most vulgar expediency. Numbers would suit the purpose 

 of designating organic conceptions as well as names, and for purposes 

 of identification one name is in itself as good as another. If a man's 

 fame only rests on the possibility of attaching his name, with or 

 without an intervening comma, to the particular designation of so 

 many species, we cannot do more than shed a passing tear upon him 

 if the general advantage of science should blot out for ever his poor 

 name and personality. In our next paragraph we discuss a proposal 

 based on no principle or justice or right, but one that would auto- 

 cratically rid us of confusion, and put an end to the constant changes 

 of zealous pedants. 



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