i8 93 . INDEXES TO NOMENCLATURE. 381 



is sincerely to be hoped that so monumental a work will not be allowed 

 to stand still, but that it will be kept up-to-date in manuscript, both 

 at Kew and at the British Museum. Indeed, nowadays, it is the obvious 

 duty of a public institution to save the valuable time of its own staff 

 by arranging for a special department where information of this kind 

 can be obtained for the asking. 



It is, perhaps, in a general review of this kind, somewhat carping 

 to criticise so great a result, but one is impelled to notice the very 

 serious oversight of the omission of dates in all but those entries 

 relating to serial publications. It would have conduced to far greater 

 perfection had it been realised that the date of a generic or specific 

 name is of considerable importance; so considerable is it, indeed, that 

 it is perfectly incredible that it should have been left out. But Mr. 

 Jackson can remedy this if he has still the energy and the means to 

 do it, by issuing with volume 4, at a slightly extra cost, a complete 

 list of the abbreviations used in alphabetical order, together with the 

 date and a brief extension explanatory of them. We trust he will see 

 his way to do this. For a criticism on the scientific aspect of the 

 work, we need but refer to a masterly article from the pen of Mr. 

 James Britten in the Journal of Botany for October ; with this 

 criticism we are quite in accord. The introduction of the word 

 " Kewensis " strikes us as unnecessary, and we would like to have read 

 Jackson and Hooker on the cover, instead of Hooker and Jackson, but 

 this without the slightest disrespect to Sir Joseph Hooker. 



To turn to Zoology : up to the time of Louis Agassiz, zoologists 

 had practically no book to refer to that would assist them in dis- 

 covering the literary whereabouts of a generic name. Gmelin, in his 

 edition of Linnaeus's " Systema Naturae," 1 788-1 790, had published a 

 complete index to the many thousand species described in that work, 

 but it was reserved for Louis Agassiz to publish a " Nomenclator 

 Zoologicus," in which he gave a full reference to every generic name 

 he could find that had been used up to his day (33,000 entries). 

 Nothing further was available beyond the lists published in the yearly 

 volumes of the Zoological Record (vol. vii. and onwards), until 1873, 

 when August Marschall published his " Nomenclator Zoologicus," a 

 book containing much new matter, but, unfortunately, in many 

 respects inaccurate. On October 9, 1879, a letter appeared in Nature 

 from Samuel H. Scudder, containing a notice that the writer had 

 arranged and collated previous lists of generic names, and asking 

 assistance towards its completion. In 1882 subsequently ap- 

 peared Scudder's " Nomenclator Zoologicus, an alphabetical list 

 of all generic names that have been employed by naturalists 

 for recent and fossil animals from the earliest times to the close 

 of the year 1879." This work was divided into two parts; part 

 1 containing a full reference to all generic names not in Agassiz, 

 Marschall, or the Zoological Record; and part 2, "Universal 

 Index," an index giving the name, author, and date of every generic 



