THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 51 



members when known is a sufficient definition of the limits of a group 

 and gives it an unquestionable right to recognition." That looks rather 

 like a reversal of Dr. ThorelPs Rule than a modification of it, and it is 

 the foundation on which these late innovations rest. What right has any 

 man to lay down a Rule or propound a Canon at variance with the 

 received Code, and then assume that his Rule or Canon has the force of 

 law ? The Rules of the British Association were adopted by the repre- 

 sentatives of the different branches of zoology, assembled in convention, 

 and they have been accepted and acted upon. If any of them need 

 modification or repeal, such change must proceed from as high an 

 authority as that which enacted them. We may reverence or respect the 

 opinions of an Agassiz, or a Thorell, or a Scudder, but in these matters 

 to consider opinions as so many laws would be to establish a dangerous 

 precedent, and cannot for one moment be tolerated. 



Under another of these Canons Mr. Scudder has undertaken to apply 

 the rule of priority to groups higher than genera, as follows : " In any 

 subsequent alteration of the limits of a group its name must never be 

 cancelled." And accordingly we are requested to introduce a host of 

 barbarous family and stirps names, to the utter confusion of the received 

 nomenclature of the higher groups. The Committee of the Br. Ass'n, 

 on the contrary, not intending to apply the rule of priority to these 

 groups, recommended " that the assemblages of genera termed families 

 should be uniformly named by adding the termination idee, to the earliest 

 known or most typically characterized genus in them, and that the sub- 

 divisions termed sub-families should be similarly constructed with the 

 termination hue" And this recommendation has been accepted and 

 generally acted on because this mode of designating families and sub- 

 families, being uniform and an aid to memory, was found eminently 

 convenient. It was regarded as a vast improvement on the fantastic and 

 heterogenous names of the earlier authors and of Hiibner especially. 

 But the effect of this Canon would be to swamp our nomenclature with 

 such terms as armati and hypati, argonautae and moderatae, adoleocentes 

 and terribiles, frugalia and voracia, and hundreds more equally absurd. 

 And already we find the writings of Mr. Scudder defaced and obscured by 

 them. This is making progress backwards, and in my opinion is as 

 sensible as if we were to surrender the Indian numerals for the letters of 

 Rome, or the notation of chemistry for the hieroglyphics of the alchemist, 

 or railroads for buck-boards and pillions. 



