THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 25 



in 187 1, adopts the 10th edition of the same work (1758), and says dis- 

 tinctly : — " Every name given before 1758 loses its right." Others go back 

 to various earlier dates. If the earliest Linnsean edition comes to be 

 claimed as having a prior right over those that followed, as symptoms 

 indicate, then there will be a sweeping away of landmarks, that will make 

 the lesser floods hitherto experienced seem as nothing. 



The result of all these efforts at stability, for that is the avowed object 

 of the advocates of rigid priority of date, is extreme confusion,* instead 

 of the agreement hoped for when the Code of the British Association was 

 adopted, and students of one branch of Entomology at least are at a loss 

 to know where the Nomenclature stands to-day, and are very certain that 

 under the present order of things there will not be a name familiar to them 

 that 20 or 50 years hence will not be supplanted under the claims of 

 priority. 



The Code of the British Association not only has not been adopted in 

 detail by the British naturalists, who might be supposed to have given 

 their assent to it, but it has not been adopted in other countries. t It is 

 not the law of France nor of Germany. In the latter country, in 1858, a 

 Code of Nomenclature was adopted by the Dresden Congress, in which 

 the Rule on the subject of priority more sensibly meets the requirements 



* Prof. Yerrill, in his comment on Rule 2, says: — "Disregard of this important 

 and essential law (viz., fixing the 12th edition as the starting point,) has brought into 

 Conchology, and some other branches of Zoology, an almost incredible amount of con- 

 fusion." 



+ " Notwithstanding the Rules sanctioned by the authority of the Brit. Ass'n, 

 it would not seem that any perceptible improvement has taken place." — G. It. Crotch, 

 Cist. Eat, 1S72 



Mr. Kirby has revised, &c, " in accordance with a series of Rules selected from 

 those issued by the Brit. Ass'n for 1885." — Wallace. 



Dr. Thorell ' 'refers to the old Brit. Ass'n Rules with general approval, but differs 

 from them in some important points." — Ibid. 



Dr. Staudinger lays down eight rules that vary from those of the Brit. Ass'n or 

 from Kirby and Thorell in several particulars. And Gemminger and Harold's Cat. 

 Coleopt. differs in the Rules applied from all the others. See Wallace. As to 

 French authors, the following extract of a letter to me from a distinguished English 

 Entomologist will show how heterodox is their position : — "The chief confusion in 

 generic Nomenclature is owing to the French, who consistently ignore or alter every 

 thing done in other countries, on purpose to force their own names on the world in 

 place of others." 



