200 Reply to Mr. Oyilbi/s 



all, — without making an attempt to preserve order and regu- 

 larity in the science ? Is it not better that a few plain rules 

 should be submitted to the consideration of naturalists, and 

 followed, if for no better reason, for convenience sake, — than 

 that we should suffer the immense ^convenience of having 

 no rules whatever to guide us ? 



With a view of contributing my mite to the preservation of 

 order, I communicated to this Magazine (vol. i. n.s. p. 173,) 

 a few miscellaneous propositions, which were submitted to 

 naturalists, — not as an act for their guidance, but as a bill for 

 their approval. These rules had no pretensions to originality, 

 but were selected from various sources, especially from the 

 works ofMr.Swainson. Yet, so far am I from being a "zoolo- 

 gical radical" that I then introduced a principle of a decidedly 

 conservative character, namely, that the rules there proposed 

 should not be retrospective, but should merely serve as guides 

 in the naming of new genera and species, and consequently 

 that the names of genera and species originally imposed by 

 their founders, should, (with very few exceptions), be retained. 

 Therefore it is clear that I am innocent of the charge of ma- 

 nufacturing " verbal crucibles in which every original name 

 is to be melted down and recompounded as may best suit the 

 fancy or the caprice of the presiding alchemists." Indeed I 

 fully agree with Mr. Ogilby in resisting the retrospective 

 operation of these rules, witness vol. i. n.s. p. 173. " Names 

 which have been long adopted and established require a dif- 

 ferent set of rules from those which are given for the first 

 time." And hence I regret to see in Mr. Swainson's useful 

 Classification of Birds, so large a list of " generic terms not 

 adopted;" and if I were writing on that subject, I should have 

 no hesitation in re-adopting all such as possessed the claim 

 of priority. All that I think can be effected by drawing up 

 rules, such as we are speaking of, is to make naturalists, in 

 future, more careful than they have hitherto been, in imposing 

 new names on their discoveries, for the more they, in so doing, 

 conform to such rules as are adopted by the majority of na- 

 turalists, the more probability is there that those names will 

 be permanently retained. But if a naturalist now, when he 

 ought to know better, persists in naming a new genus or 

 species by a term which is erroneous, or too long, or unclas- 

 sical, or comparative, or otherwise objectionable, he cannot 

 expect to be treated with the same lenity which is extended 

 to the fathers of science, whose nomenclature is sanctioned 

 by long usage. 



I now proceed to notice some of the minor points of Mr. 

 Ogilby's paper. There is perhaps no one of the proposed 



