J' O XJ R N JL Xv 



OF THE 



txo "^oxU ^utaiixological ^atijety* 



Edited by Harrison G. Dyar. 



Publishes articles relating to any class of the subkingdom Arthropoda, subject 

 to the acceptance of the Publication Committee. Original communications in this 

 field are solicited. 



Editorial. 



The genus, as primarily and logically defined, is a conception of its 

 author, possessing a certain set of characters, arbitrarily selected. 

 Any species possessing all of these characters, no matter what others, 

 belongs to the genus, and any species not possessing all of these char- 

 acters does not belong to it. This is the original idea of a genus. 

 If, therefore, an author defines a series of genera to his own satisfac- 

 tion, and a second author divides the same set of species on other 

 characters, or on the same ones differently combined, none of the 

 genera used by the second author are the same as those of the first. 

 Unfortunately for the plan, a genus carries a name and in the case 

 just supposed none of the generic names proposed by the first author 

 could properly be used by the second author, but he must propose an 

 entirely new set. Now successive authors seldom have the same gen- 

 eric conceptions, while fixity of names is a prime requisite. To bring 

 it about as far as possible, the rule of priority has been invented and 

 it has been decided that no names can be dropped, but every name 

 validly proposed must be forever carried, either as a valid genus or a 

 synonym of some other. Each generic name must depend upon a 

 typical species and any group thereafter formed that contains this 

 typical species must carry that generic name. Thus only can old 

 names be saved and applied to new generic groupings. 



The logical result is to completely transform the original idea of a 

 genus. It is no longer a conception of its author, but is dependent 

 upon the characters actually possessed by its type species. From a 



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