254 [November, 



fetish. Then how can any one in future be prevented from perpetrat- 

 ing similar or worse atrocities ? On the contrary, a precedent would 

 have been established, and every illiterate species-monger might quote 

 it in his own justification. My position is again logical ; as these 

 names are null and void, others are needed. 



(3) Mr. Busck " is not sure I am correct" in regarding arbitrary 

 Avords as more difficult to remember ; but as in the middle of the 

 following page he roundly abuses these very words for their sameness 

 and lack of distinctiveness (which is exactly my contention, expressed 

 in other terms), he must have become convinced meanwhile. 



(4) He argues that my names must lie equally nonsensical with 

 Mr. Kearfott's, since I have not seen the insects. This is a good 

 example of the confusion of thought which characterises his whole 

 communication ; in this instance he is passing from one signification of 

 the word " sense," viz. "meaning," to another, viz. " reasonableness," 

 without knowing it. If ten Latin adjectives are selected at random as 

 names for insects, they will still have sense, as opposed to ten arbitrary 

 names for which no meaning can be suggested, and which are there- 

 fore nonsense. As for my names being necessarily inappropriate, it 

 is extraordinary that it should not have occurred to him that I read 

 the descriptions ; the fact is so, however, and my names were in all 

 instances chosen to be appropriate ; indeed I also possess some of the 

 species, and in at least one case (Eucosma argyraula, which I took 

 myself in a prairie near Akron, Colorado, on September 11th, 1883), 

 more specimens than Mr. Kearfott himself examined. The name 

 amanda, which he quotes, refers of course to appearance, and has also 

 another bearing which hardly seems to have struck him ; to object to 

 it on the ground that it might possibly be inappropriate in an agricul- 

 tural sense is merely captious. He also quotes such names as cratx- 

 gana, Hiibner, and asks whether I would change this, erroneoxisly 

 assuming that the name implies that the insect feeds on Gratiegus, 

 whereas it merely implies association without specifying its nature ; 

 but granting that it is inappropriate (probably it is not), it would 

 certainly be just as easy to remember as one taken from an appro- 

 priate food-plant. All names taken from plants are undesirable, and 

 so are all taken from places, as they are likely to give false impres- 

 sions ; so also are all taken from personal names, as introducing 

 uncouth forms (this applies also to place-names) ; the use of such 

 names argues great poverty of imagination, liut they present no 

 difiiculty on the score of memory. 



