Vol. XXlii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 275 



I AM AGAINST the strict application of the rule of priority, because 

 there seems to be no end to the changes arising under it. 



Take the birds of North America, some 700 species, if I remember 

 rightly. The American Ornithologists' Union has had a committee 

 working on them for over thirty years, and every supplement to the 

 original check list has an increasingly large number of changes of 

 names, owing to the application of this law. In fact, the common 

 names of the birds have been stable, and the scientific ones unstable. 

 Now, if a committee of experts working for thirty years on the 

 birds of one country only cannot reach stability, by the application 

 of this rule, how can we ever reach it in larger groups for the whole 

 world? 



I heartily agree with Mr. J. Chester Bradley's letter in the May 

 NEWS. 



Furthermore, I think that where anyone proposes a change of name 

 of any species, that change ought not to go into effect, until a 

 year after the proposer of the change has published his reasons for 

 thinking the change ought to be made. I have seen names changed 

 in one publication and changed back again in the next issue. I have 

 seen a name changed by the discovery of a new name for the species 

 in an obscure publication, and the change upset by further research 

 in the very same book. 



Lastly, I think a great many name changes, new species, sub-species 

 and varieties are due at the bottom, simply to the unconscious van- 

 ity of the author who desires to see his name in print as much a? 

 possible. Let us all guard against too much subconscious cerebration of 

 this sort. C. S. BRIMLEY. 



IT MAY NOT be amiss to call attention to the fact that much con- 

 fusion in the nomenclature of insects is not due to the law of priority, 

 but to entomologists who do not follow that law, to entomologists who 

 follow nomina conserranda, conserving and using names that they know 

 to be synonyms when the majority of their colleagues are following 

 priority. 



There is no way of enforcing any law in nomenclature. No prin- 

 ciple of nomenclature ever had more support and authority hack of it 

 than the law of priority. Ever since 1842, every congress and code 

 have stood by it; will nomina conservanda receive more support? 



No one more than the specialist dislikes to change names; the 

 change of Conoce Chains to Xiphidium will be of more annoyance to 

 Mr. Caudell and a few other systematists in Orthoptera than to all 

 the professors of Zoology in the country. Rut in recent years many 

 systematists have realized the truth of the statement made seventy 

 years ago by a committee of conservative English Zoologists, "The 



