274 



THE USE OF SCIENTIFIC AND POPULAR NAMES 

 IN ECONOMIC BIOLOGY. 



By S. a. NEAVE, M.A., D.Sc. (Oxon.). 



Biological science in its economic aspects is a comparatively 

 modern study, and since it necessarily appeals to a far wider public than 

 does the purely scientific side of the subject, it is perhaps not unnatural, 

 and to some extent inevitable, that popular names for plants and animals 

 should be widely used in preference to scientific ones by writers on the 

 subject. At the same time it must be recognised that the work of the 

 systematist is necessarily the foundation on which economic workers 

 must build. Without the accurate identification and nomenclature of 

 plants or animals, no important study of their biology or distribution 

 can be rendered available to others and no comparison of results can be 

 made between those who speak different languages. 



It is obvious however that much of the work of the economic bio- 

 logist is published for the benefit of agriculturists and others who have 

 little or no scientific training. It is therefore essential that to convey 

 anything to such a public the popular names of the plants and animals 

 concerned must be used. This does not however justify the omission 

 of scientific names, a practice that is only too frequent at the present 

 time. If the use of these in the text is objected to, they can always be 

 added as a footnote — as is done in many of the bulletins of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. 



One objection — and that not an unreasonable one — that has been 

 raised to the use of scientific names is the unfortunate change in nomen- 

 clature that continually arises, even in the case of the commonest species 

 and most widely known pests. The recent change of the name of the 

 brown-tail moth — known for so long as Euprocds chrysorrJioea and now 

 called Nygmia ])haeorrhoea — is a good example of this. Though this 

 objection is sound so far as it goes, the remedy lies, not in the disuse 

 of scientific names, but in the cooperation on the part of workers in 

 the economic field to put pressure on the International Committee on 

 Zoological Nomenclature to bring about with the inininiuin of delay 

 some final decision as to the names of the principal animals and plants 

 of economic importance. 



