198 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [June, '04 



species, never figured it and, strictly speaking, never named 

 it, as he only named Reaumur's figures of a Coccid on elm. 

 Surely, such work as this does not advance the science of 

 entomology, and one can hardly believe that the ashes of 

 Linnaeus are additionally honored by this revolution in nomen- 

 clature. The generic name was applied to the species by 

 Shinier many years ago, but nobody else has used it until 

 lately. But this is not the worst case by any means. In 

 1824 Thomas Say published a good description of Smerinthus 

 geminatus, accompanied by a most beautiful and accurate 

 illustration of the moth, drawn by Mrs. Say. In breeding a 

 number of these moths, there sometimes appears an occasional 

 individual with a single ocellus, and there is every gradation 

 between this and the typical form. It so happened that Drury, 

 in 1773, described this form as jamaicensis, with the statement 

 that it came from Jamaica. Now, it has never since been 

 found in Jamaica it is only an extreme variation, and as 

 stated by Dr. Smith, though this name has priority, it is not 

 only a misnomer, but is inexpressive and absolutely mislead- 

 ing. The description does not describe the species at all, yet 

 because of priority of publication, Say's name has recently been 

 reduced to a synonym, after having been in use for over 75 

 years and filling all the requirements of a name. But let us 

 imagine a parallel case. A naturalist, from Mars, for inst- 

 ance, lands on earth and begins to describe species beginning 

 with man. He happens to alight in Patagonia and forthwith 

 describes one of the most degraded forms of the human race. 

 Another investigator, a few years after, happens to alight in 

 the north temperate zone, and describes, we will say. the An- 

 glo-Saxon. Now, following this same law of priority, and 

 with no less regard for the truth that science is supposed to 

 portray, the Patagonian must forever be the type of the human 

 species, while the Anglo-Saxon must content himself with be- 

 ing a bleached-out synonym. This is a good illustration of 

 what I have in mind when I say that some men are getting in 

 the way of others. Again, we have been lately surprised to 

 see the name of the codling moth Carpocapsa pomonella, a name 

 by which it has been known so long that there is no difficult}- 



