THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 223 



ON ENTOMOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



BY JOHN L. LECONTE, M. D., PHILADELPHIA. 



Part II. — 0)1 Generic Types. 



" Ignorato genere proprio, nulla descriplio, quamvis accurate tradita 

 certum demonstret ; sed plerumque fallat." — C^salp. apud Linn., Syst- 

 Nat, xii, I, 13. 



In the first part of this essay I endeavored to show the confusion 

 which resulted from the application of the law of priority to the names 

 employed in the early development of our science by persons who had 

 no idea corresponding to the law which has since been formulated. 

 We will now attempt to discuss the second great fallacy in the exegesis of the 

 writings of the founders of the science ; the selection on principles, more 

 or less arbitrary, but always opinionative, of generic types, when these 

 have notbceti explicitly mentioned by the author. 



With the more minute observation of differences in structure, and 

 the consequent multiplication of genera, has arisen an idea that all 

 classification, generic and otherwise, is simply a human contrivance for 

 the purpose of expressing degrees of resemblance between the organic 

 forms which we collect and recognize as distinct. 



In short, that our best efforts to ascertain the relations of organic 

 beings has resulted, not in a system, but in a dictionary. 



This was not the idea of the fathers in science — nor is it the idea of 

 many respectable students of the present day. 



The language of Linnseus is clear upon this subject. ' Genus et 

 species natur?e opus ; ' to him and to his followers there was no generic 

 type. Each species comprised in the genus Avas equally typical, unless, as 

 in rare cases, it was mentioned as aberrant, with a suspicion expressed in 

 some instances that it would be subsequently separated as a distinct 

 genus. When dissections were made, as in the fuller definitions in the 

 foot notes in the works of Fabricius, it was not because the dissected 

 species were selected peculiarly as the type of the genus (for in many 

 instances the dissections are not part of the generic formula), but merely 

 that the most common and available species was chosen for the purpose 

 of giving more information than was conveyed by the condensed generic 

 diagnosis. 



