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Vol. XL 



LONDON, MAY, 1908. 



No. 5. 



TYPE AND TYPICAL.* 



BY HENRY H. LYMAN, MONTREAL. 



These terms are used in such different senses by different authors 

 that confusion is sometimes caused, and it is much to be desired that some 

 authoritative body of naturalisis should accurately define their proper use, 

 and then that all other naturalists should accept the decision and conform 

 to it even if it does not agree with their own individual opinions. 



My thoughts have been recently turned in this direction by reading 

 the Annual Presidential i\ddress of Mr. Charles Owen Waterhouse, read 

 before the Entomological Society of London on the 15th of January last. 



In his address Mr. Waterhouse urges, and in my opinion rightly, that 

 accuracy and stability of nomenclature are of more importance than the 

 observance of the strict letter of the law of priority, but we differ in our 

 views as to the use of the word type. 



Mr. Waterhouse urges, as others have done, that there should be only 

 one type specimen for each species, and that that type specimen should 

 be the standard for all time, while I hold that a species should never be 

 founded upon one specimen where that can be avoided. 



We agree, however, in regarding the preservation of type specimens 

 as of the greatest importance. 



Mr. Waterhouse, pointing o'ut the different ways in which different 

 authors use the word type, especially mentioning that some regard all the 

 specimens which they had before them when describing a new species as 

 types, and distribute them as such, says : " Some thirty-five years ago I 

 saw the danger arising from this loose way of using the word, and applied 

 the word " type " to the actual specimen described when that could be 

 determined, and called the other examples, mentioned by an author, 

 * co-types.' Some years afterwards my colleague, Mr. Oldfield Thomas, 

 proposed (P. Z. S., 1893, p. 242) the terms para-type, topo-type and meta- 

 type, and all these are useful in their way, but we are both agreed that the 

 word type should be restricted to the actual specimen upon which the 

 species is founded." 



*Read before the Montreal Branch of the Entomological Society of Ontario, 

 Feb. 8th, 1908. 



