204 Remarks on Mr. Ogilby's 



If in this paper I have seen reasons for persisting in my ob- 

 jections to some of the terms employed by Mr. Ogilby for the 

 families of Cheiropoda, I can assure him that I am by no 

 means blind to the very great merits of his paper on the re- 

 lations of those animals, which I think all naturalists will 

 agree in pronouncing one of the most valuable and important 

 memoirs ever communicated to this Magazine. 



Cracombe House, 



Ever sham, March 19, 1838. 



Art. IV. Remarks upon Mr. Ogilby s Views of Zoological Nomen- 

 clature. By J. O. Westwood, Esq. F.L.S. Secretary to the En- 

 tomological Society. 



Having devoted considerable attention to the modern nomen- 

 clature of Natural History, especially with a view to render it, 

 in some degree, more in accordance with the vast improve- 

 ments which have resulted from the enlarged views of modern 

 naturalists, my attention has been, of course, attracted by Mr. 

 Ogilby's two papers, published in preceding numbers of the 

 Mag. Nat. Hist., and Mr. Strickland's comments on the first 

 of them. I am not disposed to quarrel with the tone of Mr. 

 Ogilby's last-published article; — I would only be allowed to 

 suggest, that in my experience of scientific discussions, I have 

 generally observed that those who resorted to raillery and ri- 

 dicule, were almost sure to come off second-best at last. — 

 Neither am I inclined to enter into any discussion as to the 

 propriety of regarding the Greeks and Romans as sound na- 

 turalists, and as such entitled to weight in matters of nomen- 

 clature. It is sufficient to know that Mr. Ogilby, in the 

 second of these articles, sets up the old classical names, dis- 

 carding, as mischievous and arbitrary, the family terminations 

 of names, which, for nearly thirty years, have been adopted 

 by almost every naturalist of eminence in this country, and 

 which are also, to some extent, now employed on the conti- 

 nent. It will be seen that in his nomenclature, the family 

 of the anthropomorphous Quadrumana of the old world, are 

 termed, as a group, Simice, because it was the name by which 

 the ancients designated the same animals ; and that the ana- 

 logous anthropomorphous Quadrmnana of South America are 

 termed Simiada, in order thereby to express the relation which 

 these animals bear to the true Simiw. In taking these steps, 



