276 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [June, 'l2 



name originally given by the founder of a group, or the describer of a 

 species, should be permanently retained to the exclusion of all subsequent 

 synonyms." (Rule i, Brit. Assoc. Code, 1842. Westwood, Waterhouse 

 and Shuckard were the entomologists on that committee, later (1860) 

 Stainton and Wallace concurred; Darwin was a member.) Therefore 

 many are willing to do what systematists over and over again have 

 neglected to do, to follow a principle rather than personal desire. Ten 

 years ago I knew as well as I know to-day that Parasitus should replace 

 Gamasus but in my Treatise on Acarina (1904) I did not change; now 

 with practically all European acarologists using Parasitus I shall adopt 

 it, though the change is much more annoying to me than to all the 

 anatomists in the world. 



The refusal of many Dipterists to use certain names is not because 

 of priority but for an entirely different reason ; generic names without 

 species. In Lepidoptera dozens of genera and hundreds of species 

 have been changed because 1 of priority by all leading Lepidopterists. 

 In Odonata both the Kirby and the Muttkowski catalogues (all we have) 

 accept priority. That list of names of Diptera to be preserved is based 

 on strict priority, while in the list to be excluded are many names 

 which have been continuously in use for fifty years and more, and 

 which almost all Dipterists would like to have conserved. 



Nomina conservanda is an Utopian dream, the substitution of per- 

 sonal convenience for a definite principle. What will be conserved? 

 One wants this, another does not. No committee meeting now has any 

 more authority than committees meeting ten, twenty or fifty years 

 hence. They will be controlled by other zoologists with other desires. 

 and conserve other names. 



I learned to know a common dragon-fly by the name of Plathenris 

 trimaculata. Can I have it conserved? I learned to know a scale in- 

 sect by the name of Mytilaspis pomorum. Can I have it conserved? 

 Yet all the changes possible in Apidae which Prof. Cockerell fears 

 will not be of one half the annoyance to entomologists in general as was 

 that change of Mytilaspis pomorum to Lepidosaphes ulmi. Hundreds of 

 the worst changes in many groups are already in all degrees of accep- 

 tance. Will these be nullified? No! priority will hold and will always 

 hold simply because it is a principle while nomina conservanda is simplj 

 personal desire. Much of the confusion in nomenclature arises from an 

 entirely different source. One entomologist writes Papilio ajax, another 

 Iphiclides ajax. This is the recognition by one of groups as genera, 

 which another entomologist will not recognize as of even subgeneric 

 rank. Neither priority nor nomina conservanda will help this. 

 NATHAN BANKS. 



