332 LIFE AT DOWN. ^TAT. 33-45. [1848. 



counterbalance his previous caution. I hope that you may- 

 think better of the book than I do. 



Yours most truly, 



C. Darwin. 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



October 6th, 1848. 



... I have lately been trying to get up an agitation (but 

 I shall not succeed, and indeed doubt whether I have time 

 and strength to go on with it), against the practice of Natu- 

 ralists appending for perpetuity the name of the first describer 

 to species. I look at this as a direct premium to hasty work, 

 to naming instead of describing. A species ought to have a 

 name so well known that the addition of the author's name 

 would be superfluous, and a [piece] of empty vanity.* At 

 present, it would not do to give mere specific names ; but I 

 think Zoologists might open the road to the omission, by 

 referring to good systematic writers instead of to first de- 

 scribers. Botany, I fancy, has not suffered so much as 

 Zoology from mere 7iaming j the characters, fortunately, are 



* His contempt for the self-regarding spirit in a naturalist is illustrated 

 by an anecdote, for which I am indebted to Rev. L. Blomefield. After 

 speaking of my father's love of Entomology at Cambridge, Mr. Blomefield 

 continues : — " He occasionally came over from Cambridge to my Vicarage 

 at Swaffham Bulbeck, and we went out together to collect insects in the 

 woods at Bottisham Hall, close at hand, or made longer excursions in the 

 Fens. On one occasion he captured in a large bag net, with which he used 

 vigorously to sweep the weeds and long grass, a rare coleopterous insect, 

 one of the Lepturidce, which I myself had never taken in Cambridgeshire. 

 He was pleased with his capture, and of course carried it home in triumph. 

 Some years afterwards, the voyage of the Beagle having been made in the 

 interim, talking over old times with him, I reverted to this circumstance, 

 and asked if he remembered it. ' Oh yes,' (he said,) ' I remember it well ; 

 and I was selfish enough to keep the specimen, when you were collecting 

 materials for a Fauna of Cambridgeshire, and for a local museum in the 

 Philosophical Society.' He followed this up with some remarks on the pet- 

 tiness of collectors, who aimed at nothing beyond filling their cabinets 

 with rare things." 



