Vol. xxiii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 225 



Mr. Caudell implies that it is the desire to retain a long-used, but not 

 prior, name in his own specialty by a taxonomist that impels the latter 

 to vote against strict priority in all cases. We urge that it is not the 

 desires of the taxonomic specialists that should be given the chief 

 weight. Every specialist can keep in touch, at least to a great extent, 

 with the nomenclatural changes in his own group. Those who can not 

 and ought not, be compelled to submit to these changes are those who, 

 whether taxonomists or not, are not specialists in the nomenclature of 

 all the subdivisions of the animal kingdom but who, as morphologists, 

 physiologists or laborers in other fields, make constant comparisons be- 

 tween members of different groups of animals. Too much has already 

 been done in these non-taxonomic fields to bury the results under un- 

 familiar names simply because they are of prior date. 



Mr. Caudell also implies that priority, because based on codified 

 laws and rules, is certain of more unanimous consent than any proposal 

 to retain certain long-established and much-used, but not prior, names. 

 This we deny. The attitudes of recent authors in the Diptera, in the 

 Lepidoptera, in the Odonata ("to quote no others), show that many 

 students have not accepted the prior names and therefore not accepted 

 the principle of priority. Both the priority principle and the principle of 

 nomina conservanda appeal to the common sense and unanimous consent 

 of naturalists and the former has no more certain footing than the latter. 



Finally Mr. Caudell implies that the discussion on the nomina con- 

 servanda question in the recent Washington meeting of the Entomo- 

 logical Society of America was sufficient. This, too, we must deny. The 

 discussion came before the program of papers was finished. To have 

 prolonged it would have deprived more contributors of the opportunity 

 to read their papers than was actually the case. Even as it was, several 

 withdrew on account of the lack of time. We have already expressed 

 our views on this feature of the Society's meetings.* Because the dis- 

 cussion on the nomina conservanda question there was not sufficient, an.d 

 because of the approaching Congress of Entomology at Oxford, we have 

 opened the pages of the NEWS to its further consideration. 



In this number of the NEWS we publish a list of Generic Names in 

 Diptera for inclusion in the Official List of Generic Names of the Inter- 

 national Zoological Commission. If these lists, after adoption by the 

 Commission, could be made definitive by that body, so that none of the 

 included names should be disturbed by the results of any future anti- 

 quarian research, a long step would be made toward stability and con- 

 servation in nomenclature. 



We invite further votes on the alternative questions proposed in our 

 March editorial. 



* Ent. News, November, 1911, p. 418; February, 1912, p. 79. 



