18 GNATS OR MOSQUITOES — CHAPTER I 



medical technicality, would amuse a medical man. Prac- 

 tically speaking, a third name, that of the authority who 

 first described the species, is always added ; so that the 

 system is really trinomial. Not unfrequently a species is 

 described again and again by different naturalists before it 

 is discovered that all are referring to one and the same 

 animal ; and in such cases, however incomplete the des- 

 cription or inappropriate the name, the custom is to employ 

 that adopted in the description which has the priority of 

 date, and the names used in subsequent descriptions are 

 spoken of as " synonyms," e.g., Mr. Theobald finds that 

 the species originally described by Fabricus as C. fasciatus, 

 and referred to in the first edition of this handbook as 

 G. tcB7iiatus, Meig., has been redescribed under no less than 

 seventeen other names, all of which appear merely as 

 " synonyms " in the present edition. If, however, through 

 error of the original describer, or on account of subsequent 

 rearrangement, the species is referred to a genus other than 

 that used by the original authority, the name of the latter 

 is placed after the specific name in brackets, e.g., Anopheles 

 hifurcatus (L.), in which case the species was originally 

 described by Linnaeus before the genus Anopheles was 

 separated from Culex. I devote some space to these points, 

 because the failure to adhere to these conventions is a 

 frequent source of confusion. 



