INTRODUCTIOX. 



former works, have followed are, with very few exceptions, the 

 same as those that were proposed in 1842 by a Committee 

 appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, which rules are, for the most part, only a repetition 

 or development of those laid down by Linnaeus in his ' Philosophia 

 Botanica,' and which Fabricius afterwards, in his 'Philosophia 

 Entomologica,' applied to entomological names. The only point 

 of importance in which I differ from the opinions of that 

 Committee concerns the date from which priority for zoological 

 names should be reckoned. This date, according to the Committee, 

 should be the year of publication of Ed. 12 of Linnaeus's ' Systema 

 Naturae,' that is 1767. Most zoologists, however, of the present 

 day prefer the date of the 10th edition of that work, 1758, 

 But as Linnaeus had already, in his 'Philosophia Botanica,' 1751, 

 proposed and given rules for his binominal nomenclature, it seems 

 to me that it is from that year that the priority of spmes-names 

 should be reckoned, as soon as the names in question are formed in 

 full accordance with Linnaeus's binominal system *. Linnaeus 

 himself had already in 1754, in his 'Museum Regis Adolphi 

 Friderici,' described a number of animals under such binominal 

 names ; and his disciple Clerck published in 1757 his classical work 

 ' Svenska Spindlar, Aranei Suecici,' in which he describes and gives 

 good coloured figures of about 60 species of Swedish spiders, also 

 with binominal names, according to Linnaeus's system. That we 

 ought to reject these names, simply because they were published 

 before the 10th or 12th edition of the ' Systema Naturae,' no arach- 

 nologist can admit f. 



Of course I think that the so-called " lex prioritatis " affords the 



* See, especially, Thorell, " On European Spiders. I. Eeview of the 

 European Genera of Spiders, preceded by some Observations on Zoological 

 ISomenclature," in Nova Acta Keg. Soe. Scient. Upsal. ser. 3, vii. fasc. 1, 

 pp. 3-15. — For generic names, the date in question ought, it seems to me, to 

 be reckoned from the publication of the first edition of the 'Systema NalurEe,' 

 1735 (see " On Europ. Spiders," p. 8 et seq.). 



t Perfectly just is the following ride, laid down in the ' Eegeln fiir die 

 wissenschaftliehe Benennung der Thiere, zusammengestellt von der Deutschen 

 zoologischen Gesellschaft ' (1894) : " TJnzulassig sind Art- und Gattungsnamen 

 aussolclien Druckschriften, in welchen diebinare Nomenclatur nicht principioU 

 zur Anwendiing konimt " ; but it is not the logical conseqiience of that rule 

 that " Die Anwendung des rrinrilatsgpsctzps beginut niit der zchnten Ausgabe 

 Tou Linne's Sy.stema Katurfe (1758) '' (/oc. rit. p. (i) .' 



