56 c 2 Modem Nomenclature of Natural History. 



it fills 4 pages ; and yet it has been complained that some im- 

 portant characters have been omitted. 



Again our museums teem with overwhelming masses of 

 undescribed animals, notwithstanding all the efforts made by 

 naturalists to keep down their numbers. Hence the old 

 genera have become perfect magazines, where new species are 

 joined to those known to Linnaeus, in the proportion of at least 

 100 to 1. 



Hence, for the sake of convenience, divisions and subdivisions 

 have been introduced, for the purpose of collecting together 

 such species as possess a greater or less degree of relationship 

 with each other ; to which divisions, at the first indicated by 

 sectional marks only, naturalists of the present day are nearly 

 united in assigning names : no fixed rule, however, appears 

 to have been adopted, either as to the retention of the old 

 generic names, or the proposal of new ones. 



Various plans have, indeed, been proposed for the nomen- 

 clature of these dismembered groups. Dr. Leach, for this pur- 

 pose, employed the different synonymes of the old generic name 

 as the names of the subdivisions : thus, where Latreille had 

 divided the genus Scutellera into three sections, Dr. Leach 

 raised them to the rank of three genera, to which he applied 

 the synonymous names of Scutellera, Tetyra, and Thyreocoris, 

 The inconvenience and impropriety of this plan need not be 

 dwelt upon. 



Mr. Swainson has adopted a different method, having em- 

 ployed the specific name of an insect, which he considered the 

 type of a subgenus, as the name of such subgenus, giving at 

 the same time a new specific name to the species in question : 

 thus the Papilio Podalirius of Linnaeus is the Podalirius euro- 

 pae N us of Swainson. This plan has certainly the advantage of 

 at once calling to mind the resemblance of any new or ad- 

 ditional species, placed in such subgenera, to that of the old 

 typical species; yet there are several objections against its 

 adoption : — 1. the confusion thereby introduced in the nomen- 

 clature of species; "Nomina trivialia nunquam absque summa 

 necessitate mutanda sunt:" (Fabricius Phil. Ent.) 2. the in- 

 justice thereby done to the original describer of the species, 

 whose name is thus supplanted : and, 3., the impossibility of 

 following up this plan in other groups. In the butterflies it 

 may be generally adopted, because their names have almost 

 become, as Mr. Swainson has elsewhere well remarked, an 

 index to the heathen mythology : but it would scarcely be 

 correct, for instance, to detach Calosoma scrutator or Chrysis 

 cyanea, as subgenera, with the names of Scrutator americanus 

 or Cyanea vulgaris : and, even amongst the butterflies, the plan 



