202 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



commt:ntaries on the method in which I think they should be executed,, 

 in order that we may arrive at permanent and unchangeable results.- 

 These canons, as I would express them, are as follows : 



1. The binominal system of nomenclature is the only one to be 

 recognized : one word for the genus, and another for the species, to 

 indicate each object. 



2. Linnaeus was the author of the binominal system. 



3. The law of priority must be adhered to, so far as the interests of 

 science make it practicable. 



This law renders inviolable the name of every species which has been 

 properly published, and the name of every genus properly defined and 

 exemplified by one or more species. 



4. The great number of the organic beings subjected to study 

 has made it necessary,in order to avoid confusion,to increase the binominal 

 name by adding the authority upon which the name either in whole or- 

 part rests. 



5. In the formation of new names, reference is to be had to classical 

 construction and to the ordinary proprieties of social intercourse. 



Since the binominal system is of modern invention, being indeed 

 scarcely more than a century old, and was only gradually introduced even* 

 by its author, it is obvious that none of these fundamental canons existed 

 in the minds of the founders of Zoology, and that the appreciation of the 

 necessity of such ordinances has become apparent only in consequence 

 of the confusion occasioned by tlieir non-existence. 



The old codes of rules, Philosophia Botanica of Linnceus, and its 

 imitation, Philosophia Kntomologica of Fabricius, do not cover many of 

 the most perplexing cases which have since arisen under these four rules, 

 although, if acted on in good faith, tliey would have prevented mach of 

 the confusion since produced. 



Concerning the two old codes I have at present nothing to say, the 

 exhaustive commentary on the rules of Linnneus in the introduction 

 to the Nomenclator Zoologicus of Agassiz, leaving, in fact, nothing to be , 

 desired. 



It is therefore apparent that in applying the four canons, their influence 

 must, like all retro-active laws, commence at certain arbitrary periods, to 

 be determined, not by the judgment of individual investigators, but by 



