OF WASHINGTON. 251 



Dr. Gill, referring to the fact that Mr. Banks had taken an 

 ancient Indian tribal name for his new genus, urged the advis 

 ability of employing names, where possible, referable to, or 

 descriptive of, some peculiarity of the animal, rather than In 

 dian or other irrelevant terms, or manufactured, or as they are 

 commonly called, ' ' nonsense ' ' names. 



Dr. Stiles urged that the rules recently promulgated by the 

 International Congress of Zoologists at Paris be adhered to, 

 and stated that the general zoologist has rights in the laws of 

 nomenclature above the specialist, and the latter should yield 

 to the former and adopt for his special and limited branch the 

 general rules deemed best for the entire zoological or biological 

 field. 



Dr. Fox said that the code would not hold with the ornithol 

 ogists of Great Britain and the United States, who have their 

 own rules, in which the name of a species served the purpose 

 of a mere number and need necessarily have no significance, 

 either as to origin or meaning. The subject was discussed 

 further at considerable length by the persons already mentioned 

 and others, and finally, on motion of Dr. Stiles, a committee 

 was appointed to bring up for future discussion and action by 

 the Society the code of rules adopted by the Paris Congress. 



Dr. Marx presented some remarks on the geographical dis 

 tribution of spiders, in which he said that the Drassidse, form 

 erly supposed to be boreal in habitat are now found to occur 

 in the tropics in abundance, and that as a matter of fact we 

 have not a single family that is exclusively northern in range. 

 In the Attidse, however, certain genera may prove to be 

 altogether boreal, but the family is not sufficiently worked up 

 to admit a positive statement in this regard. 



DECEMBER 3RD, 1891. 



President Marx in the chair. Sixteen members present. 



Under the head of short notes Mr. Howard said that Mr. 

 Iviigger, on page 61 of Volume I of the Proceedings of this 

 Society, records Mantis (Stagmomantis) Carolina as found on 

 Smithsonian grounds November n, 1886, and stated that as 



