88 THE REPORT OF THE No. 19 



It is all very well for a great creature of this kind to have a long name, 

 but there is a quiet, harmless, little brown bird with a yellow spot over the 

 eye, and on the bend of the wing, that builds its nest every summer among 

 the grasses of our fields and meadows ; and if you wish to speak of it scienti- 

 fically you must call it Ammodramus Sandwichemsis savanna; I allude to 

 the Savanna Sparrow. 



And worse, still, a western form of the little common blue butterfly 

 is labelled Lycana psetidargiolus Arizonensis. What has the little crea- 

 ture done to deserve such an awful title? These titles have 30 or 32 letters 

 in them; some names of the small moths are even worse, and have 36 or 

 37 letters. 



It is necessary to have some means of designating well defined varieties 

 or subspecies, but the present method of adding a third word just like 

 another specific name is awkward, and cumbersome ; and, I may add, un- 

 scientific, for it uses as long a word to define small and unimportant differ- 

 ences as it does to indicate great and important ones. A number of names 

 are thus occupied that might otherwise be employed for genera and species, 

 and this is a serious thing, for species are now so numerous that suitable 

 words of Greek or Latin origin that have not previously been used, are 

 very hard to find. Mr. Taylor complains of this difficulty in the Cana- 

 dian Entomologist for last month; and every year the difficulty increases. 



The plan of naming varieties after the discoverer or his friends is one 

 way of getting over the difficulty, but it is in many ways a very objectionable 

 method. Some people like to see their names cut on the trunks of trees, 

 or deeply engraven on the benches of a public park ; but entomologists have 

 a weakness for tacking them on to the title of some poor little bug or butter- 

 fly, and, possibly, the hope of being thus immortalized sometimes gives 

 additional incentive to their zeal for uselessly multiplying subspecies and 

 varieties, and thus piling up outlandish names that make, not only ama- 

 teurs, but also many professional naturalists complain of the grievous heavi- 

 ness of the burden. 



Is there no possible relief from such a system? A great number of 

 subspecies are merely geographical races, and might always be designated 

 as Northern, Southern, Eastern or Western forms. For all these the first 

 three letters of the Latin words — borealis, australis, orientalis and occiden- 

 ialis might be affixed after the specific name; this would give us her., dus., 

 ori. and occ. as the mark of such varieties. In the same way Spring, vSum- 

 mer, Autumn or Winter forms could be designated by ver., ccst., aut. and 

 h/h, respectively, and, as every one interested would soon know what such 

 signs stood for, it would never be necessary to write the words in full. For 

 certain varieties that could not be described by these marks a few others 

 would, perhaps, be necessary. Differences in color, such as pale or dark 

 forms, could be designated by obs. and pal., or differences in pattern, such 

 as streaked or spotted, could be shown by li7i. or mac, or where it was de- 

 sirable to distinguish differences in size, such as small, middle sized, and 

 large, parvus, medius, and magnus could be shown by par., med. and mag., 

 and typ. could be affixed to the species that was regarded as the typical 

 form. ^ Thus fourteen or fifteen marks of this kind would suffice for nearly 

 all existing varieties, not only of insects, but also, probably, of birds and 

 mammals, and even if they had to be increased to twenty-four, or twenty- 

 five, there would be no great difficulty in remembering that number. Dr. 

 Fletcher's little Thecla would become Thecla stngosa occ, and the two 

 forms of G. comma would be G. comma ccst., and G. comma aut. This 

 would be a shorter and more compact method than the present one, and as 



