46 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



who of all the world might have been supposed likely to have been 

 familiar with it if it ever had been published or had any scientific value, 

 only by the mention of it in the Verzeichniss, of which it was the original 

 sketch, or from the mention in Ochsenheimer, who says he did not know 

 of it till after 1816, that is, till after the Verzeichniss was published, and 

 through the mention in the preface of that work he probably got his 

 first information about the Tentamen. 



And it is worthy of notice that from 1806 to the present day, scarcely 

 one of the German lepidopterists have recognized any of Hiibners works as 

 authoritative in nomenclature. This movement in favor of Hubner 

 originated in England with a small number of authors, and quite lately 

 has been extended to the United States by the efforts of Messrs. Scudder 

 and Grote. 



In the year 1842, the British Association appointed a Committee com- 

 posed of the most eminent zoologists of the day, to draw up and report 

 a code of Rules "by which the nomenclature of zoology may be established 

 on a uniform and permanent basis. " The committee submitted to the 

 Association a series of propositions that same year, 1842, which were 

 adopted. In 1845, a Committee appointed by the Association of Ameri- 

 can Geologists and Naturalists, adopted the rules of the British Ass'n 

 with slight alteration. 



Rule 1 2 reads as follows : " A name which has never been clearly 

 defined in some published work should be changed for the earliest name by 

 which the object shall have been so defined" And in the explanatory text 

 accompanying, the Committee of the Br. Ass'n say : " Two things are 

 necessary before a zoological term can acquire any authority — definition 

 and publication. Definition properly implies a distinct exposition of essential 

 characters, and in all cases we conceive this to be indispensable. To constitute 

 publication nothing short of the mention of the above particulars in a printed 

 book is sufficient to authenticate a genus Nor can any unpub- 

 lished description, however exact, claim any right of priority till published, 

 and then only from the date of publication.^ In a printed book ! Not on 

 a stray slip nor on a loose sheet, nor in the columns of a newspaper, but 

 in a book, that its permanence may be assured and that it may be known 

 of by all men. 



( ieyer says that Hubner published his provisional sketch in an enlarged 

 form as the Verzeichniss ; and Hubner says " let no one suppose that 

 this arrangement will need no farther correction." And accordingly we 



