Vol. xxiii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 27! 



Notes and News. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL GLEANINGS FROM ALL QUARTERS 

 OF THE GLOBE. 



STRICT PRIORITY IN NOMENCLATURE OR NoTf It is not without mis- 

 givings that I signed the statement favoring nomina conservanda. \ 

 signed it because it clearly means, not sanction to individual initiative 

 in the adoption or rejection of names, but mutual agreement expressed 

 through properly constituted official action. My misgivings grow out 

 of two considerations: One, in the present unintegrated state of 

 organization of biological science there is no satisfactory means of 

 getting opinion. I take it, this referendum vote, now proceeding at 

 home and abroad, will show how far existing nomenclatural agencies 

 have come from representing the opinion of zoologists at large. Two, 

 the proposal, if successful in allaying the most pressing causes of pres- 

 ent confusion, may tend to perpetuate the burden of nomenclature, 

 which would still be too grievous to be permanently borne. 



I am moved to sign the statement by these considerations : The 

 confusion is growing ever more confounded with divers and sundry 

 applications and extensions of the law of priority, and I would like to 

 see saved: (i) Names of genera that are types of families, thereby 

 saving the family names. (2) Names of genera that are bound up 

 with important monographs, and that must continue in use in mor- 

 phology, ecology, or other branches of biology. (3) Names of species 

 well known in popular literature, in dealers' catalogues, etc. 



In the second place, I think that the names likely to be thus conserv- 

 ed are those that no rational body would wish to sacrifice under any 

 plan, and in the third place, I shall live in the hope that there may 

 come another lucid interval when further progress by mutual agree- 

 ment may be made. JAMES G. NEEDHAM. 



I am giving my preference for strict priority. It is a bit unfair to 

 have the question put in such an unqualified way because the nomen- 

 clatural commissions of succeeding zoological congresses have not stood 

 by the code as originally devised. Every change and qualification that 

 has been adopted has simply made matters worse by introducing con- 

 tradictions. If at every congress the rules^ are going to be changed it 

 will be much better to ignore them and follow the dictates of one's own 

 conscience. I am for a logical and sane application of priority. I can- 

 not accept genera without species, like Meigen's of 1800. These must 

 date from the time they had species included in them and be credited 

 to the person who first did so. 



A word regarding your list of names to be conserved in the last 

 number of the NEWS. As I have understood it, these lists are solicited 

 from "specialists" in their respective groups. Some of us who are 

 working in these groups and are confronted by some of these names 



