October, 1913.] 225 



ON SOME AEBITEARILY FORMED SCIENTIFIC NAMES. 

 BY ATJGtrST BUSCK. 



Due to my absence on a five months' collecting trip in Panama, I 

 have but recently had opportunity to read Mr. Meyrick's interesting 

 article " On Some Impossible Specific Names in Micro-Lepidoptera " 

 [Ent. Mo. Mag., XLVIII (XXIII), pp. 32-36, Feb., 1912], and the 

 subsequent discussion (in this Magazine and " The Entomologist's 

 Record " for March, April, and May) by Lord Walsingham, the Rev. 

 G. Wheeler, and Dr. Chapman on " impossible " or " nonsense" names. 



Otherwise, as one of the accused, I should have asked space 

 before this to plead guilty, withoiit apologies for my acts, though with 

 sincere regret for their effect, if they, as Mr. Meyrick suggests, have 

 been the original source of contagion in the deplorable Kearfott 

 eruption. However, I cannot hold myself in any way responsible for 

 this epidemic and certainly can find no excuse for it, but I am ready 

 to defend such occasional arbitrary names as I, myself, along with 

 many others, have been guilty of. 



For let it be understood at once, that while I am sincerely appre- 

 ciative of Lord Walsingham' s and Mr. Wheeler's kind efforts to save 

 me from the stigma of introducing " impossible " names, and while 

 two of the three examples of my names, which Mr. Meyrick has 

 chosen to correct, are rather unfortunate for his argument, not falling 

 under his arraignment at all, I have no intention to seek refuge 

 behind artificially constructed derivations, but confess openly and 

 unblushingly, that on several occasions I have made use of an arbi- 

 trarily formed name for a new species of Microlepidoptera. 



It is not the object of this note to advocate or to defend arbitrary 

 names, but to point out the futility of endeavouring to correct one 

 evil by adding another, as, in my judgment, Mr. Meyrick has attempted ; 

 but after the several sweeping condemnations of such names a word 

 from another view-point may be apropos. 



First, it would be well to recall, that these so-called " nonsense " 

 or " impossible " names did not originate recently in America, but long 

 ago in England, and that hundreds of such names are now in common 

 use, which logically should all have to be changed if Mr. Meyrick's 

 view were adopted. It is gratifying to see Dr. Chapman's sound 

 arguments in opposition to this radical proposition, which would 

 entail endless labor and result in perpetual unrest in nomenclature, 

 just as certainly as different opinions about the corrections should 

 ever exist. 



