THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 343 



I have referred, it surely best serves the interests of science to 

 group them together under one name, and not adding another, 

 whether of qualification or otherwise, which tends to produce 

 the same evil of adding unnecessarily to our over abundant 

 vocabularies, when by using numerals or letters of the alphabet 

 the same end may be attained. 



In pursuing my criticism let me bring to your notice a series 

 of names collected in Mr. Potts' monograph. First Meyenia, 

 by Carter, superseding Spongilla, which is so intelligible and 

 venerable, as it was given by Linnaeus. Dr. Johnston, an able 

 writer on the subject, added " Fluviatilis." Why should we 

 thus, to honour an eminent German, make up a new name 

 without an absolute necessity ? Do these names, Meyenia 

 Leidyi, Millsii, Mulleri, Baileyi, Capewelli, Ramsayi, Everetti, 

 give us more information than letters of the alphabet, or do they 

 not add to'our confusion ? Some of the illustrations in this mono- 

 graph show only slight variations, and the five examples given 

 by me, in the paper referred to, declare greater variation in that 

 of Ditchleys, even including the Spongilla from the Bombay 

 tanks. 



In drawing your attention to what has come under my own 

 notice in a special organism which I have studied, I infer that 

 in others similar variations are found, and have been too readily 

 marked off as species, or have the variety specially named. But 

 the law of variation has been so ably treated by A. R. Wallace 

 in " Darwinism " that what I place before you must only be 

 regarded as an episode. 



In giving names I cannot but remember how much more 

 happy were our forefathers, as, for instance, Heartsease, 

 Pansy, Love in Idleness, that "little western flower'' as our 

 poet tells us, "Before, milk white; now purple with love's 

 wound."* But what poet could use Hutchinsonia, Gritfithsia, 

 Battersbya Bucklandi ? Names we dedicate to au organism 

 or to a species are surely best when they hint, if no more, at 

 character or structure. Dr. Bowerbank, in some instances, has 

 been happy in this particular, and has given to two genera of 

 sponges, closely allied to each other, viz., Raphiodesma and 

 Desmacidon, names that are equally allied in their combinations. 

 We Avant more simplicity, to be less overburdened with species, 

 * Midsummer Nighfa Dream. Act ii., sc. 1. 



