NOMENCLATURE. 13 



frankly state that I do not intend to impose the names I propose upon any 

 one. I shall simply attempt to reconcile the past with the present, and show, 

 as far as can be ascertained, what species the old authors probably intended 

 to describe. As far as the question of priority of the specific name goes, 

 the only guide I shall take is an original or authentic specimen, and when 

 a species which has once received a definite name can be recognized, the 

 oldest name shall be preserved to the exclusion of all others, if the change 

 is based upon authentic specimens, and not simply upon a figure, a guess, 

 which may or may not be a true one. It is, however, not in the matter of 

 the specific name that uncertainties and doubts and differences of opinion 

 are likely to arise, but in the binomial combinations, particularly with refer- 

 ence to the generic name and the limitations we choose to assign to it. 



Scarcely an original investigator recognizes within the same limits all the 

 genera adopted or proposed by his predecessors. New discoveries must 

 constantly modify our points of view, and in accordance with this state of 

 things I look upon binomial combinations as expressing (as a matter of rec- 

 ord) the opinion of any investigator of the affinities and of the history of the 

 species mentioned by him in his monograph. I also here wish distinctly to 

 protest against the habit which has become so prevalent among systematic 

 Zoologists, to make the rules of the British Association retrospective. We 

 have no right to go back previous to 1840, and say to Lamarck, "When you 

 limited the genus Spatangus, you should have included in it only such 

 species as Spatangus pectoralis; or go back, in 1825, to Gray, and because 

 he names as belonging to Echinocardium, E. lacunosus, to change all 

 the species which have, since Lamarck, been separated from Spatangus as 

 Plai/ionoius, back to Spatangus, change next all species of Spatangus, 

 making a new name for it and for Plagionohts, change Schizaster into 

 Echinocardium, suppress Echinocardium, devise a new name hence for 

 Moera* for Amphidetus, — in fact, I will undertake, by following out 

 strictly the rules of priority, and other rules as established by the British 

 Association, for the sake of obtaining greater accuracy, and to simplify 

 nomenclature, to change the generic and specific names of seven eighths 

 of the received names of recent Echini, — a process which would be highly 

 conducive to accuracy, and which I respectfully decline to go through, leav- 

 ing this pleasant task to others who may feel disposed to undertake it. 

 To save them trouble they will find all the necessary material in the accom- 

 panying pages of Synonymy. 



* Preoccupied, Leach, 1813, and Hubxer, 1816. 



