595.36 239 



II 

 The Late Lamented Latreille 



A Study in Names 



PIEEEE ANDRfi LATREILLE died between sixty and seventy 

 years ago, and now some amiable persons in Washington wish 

 to canonise him, not for any of his good works, but for one of his 

 weakest. In 1810 he published a volume, neither his first nor his 

 last, on the inexhaustible theme of crustaceans, arachnids, and 

 insects. In it he still mixes up the isopods with the arachnids, 

 although Lamarck had nine years earlier properly placed them 

 among the crustaceans. In it he passes some not undeserved 

 commendations on his own earlier writings, and on those of J. C. 

 Eabricius some criticisms of questionable temper and taste. After 

 a tolerably interesting introduction of some eighty pages, he devotes 

 the bulk of the volume to a methodical table of genera, containing 

 nothing, or next to nothing, that was new. He leaves his readers 

 to guess at what dates the genera had appeared, and by what 

 authorities all of them except his own had been established. He 

 leaves his readers also to guess whether any particular genus con- 

 tained but a single species or a score. In the last twenty-four pages, 

 in small print, as though an after-thought or as a substitute for an 

 index, he gives a " Table des genres avec I'indication de 1' espece qui 

 leur sert de type." This precious performance is now being 

 elevated into a standard of scientific nomenclature, not because of 

 any imagined thoroughness or excellence, but simply because of its 

 imperfection. For each genus, whether large or small, it mentions 

 one species and only one, with no word of description, with no 

 reason given for the selection, and this casual mention in a college 

 manual is supposed, forsooth, to confer the rights of a type-species ! 

 It becomes important, therefore, to cast a little light upon 

 Latreille's catalogue, and to ascertain the meaning and application 

 of the word ' type ' which he uses at the head of it. But a glance 

 must first be taken at more modern writers. In 1896-97 a lively 

 discussion was carried on in The Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History, ending, as I fondly hoped, in acceptance of the decision 

 that the lobster was properly assigned to the genus Astacus. The 

 controversy had been opened somewhat earlier in Dr Herrick's 



