VOL. III. J Nomenclature. 261 



in discussions of them to a study of the organisms themselves, 

 especially as such study may result in altering the bounds of genera 

 and involving a new set of names, for perhaps few botanists, if they 

 remember the mutations of genera in the last hundred years, largely 

 due to our increasing knowledge, will consider that even their own 

 efforts will be able to put nomenclature on a perfectly stable footing. 



The annoyance arising from homonyms in synonymy is com- 

 paratively small, but as between zoology and botany they are a 

 crying evil which overshadows all the others. Even so long ago 

 as 1846, when Agassiz wrote the index to his Nomenclator Zool- 

 ogicus he made the statement that the rectification of these names 

 in zoology and as between zoology and botany would necessitate 

 the sacrifice of almost half the generic names made in recent times, 

 and it must be apparent to anyone that the inconvenience of writing 

 concerning an insect feeding upon a plant of the same name is in- 

 finitely greater than that arising from the occasional revival of an 

 old homonym, especially as by the recent tendency of science 

 genera are more apt to be consolidated than divided. 



The law of priority is apparently the only way of securing uni- 

 formitv, yet it is repugnant to our sense of justice to reckon as of 

 equal value in systematic science the work of careful and conscien- 

 tious botanists and of the other far too numerous ones who, without 

 herbaria or books of reference, record their vague descriptions, 

 often identifiable only by the process of exclusion, in obscure 

 journals or trade catalogues. There is no other branch of human 

 knowledge which deliberately encourages incompetence. 



We pay a dear price for uniformity when we have to accept 

 such work as that of Necker and Rafinesque, and to dread the day 

 when some Mexican may take it into his head to identify the plants 

 of Hernandez' Historia Plantarum Novse Hispanise, and give us 

 some hundreds of names like Tzo7ipilihtdzpatli Teptizcuhdlce , for 

 instance. 



A Correction. — I included in the additions to True's Check- 

 list (in this issue) a reference to Am. Rept. Dept. Agr. 1887, p. 

 435, as the place where the name Sorex richardsonii was revived. 

 This is a mistake as 6". richardsonii was revived, so far as I know, 

 in Merriam's Geog. Dist. of Life in N. Am. (Proc. Biol.Soc. Wash, 

 vii, April 13, 1892, p. 25.) The species referred to in Annual Re- 

 port for 1887 is 6". Forsteriy which should not appear in the list of 

 additions as it is given in True's list. t.s.p. 



