310 THE entomologist's record. 



An absolute adherence to the doctrine of priority is the keynote of 

 the authors' position, and the reasons for it, though more fully stated, 

 may be gathered from the quotations just given. They apply it to the 

 elucidation of how to treat a composite species. We find an important 

 point dealt with very briefly in the following way : — "No compromise 

 is possible. Personal preferences for euphony, so-called purity of 

 language, &c., must be sacrificed by all those who sincerely 

 advocate stability of names ; there is no help for it." We object 

 to " so-called " as possibly containing a reference meant to be 

 unkind to some of our more classically-minded nomenclators, but 

 the principle involved is sound. Eottemburg called Celerio 'lallii, 

 " ffallii." No doubt he meant ^^(/alii" ; still, who is to be sure that he did 

 not mean the name in honour of some Herr Gall, latinised Gallius. 

 Ah ! it ought to have been Gallus, and thence iialli. Well, there 

 are many other possible hypotheses, all in the highest degree impro- 

 bable, doubtless. The real reason for adhering to gallii, of course, is 

 that a rule is a rule, and if you break it on a grammatical excuse, how- 

 ever obviously a good one, how shall you avoid a change being made 

 Avhen the excuse is not so good, is doubtful, is bad, is very bad. It is 

 also the case that someone, accepting <iallii in good faith, might have 

 named, say, respertUio — ;/aliL The matter must be taken in this way— 

 an author gives a species a name, that name is a word, and that word 

 is the name of the species, and must be accepted simply, without any 

 reference to how or why the author selected or formed it. Questions 

 as to the how or why of the name may be interesting from many 

 points of view, but have no bcarin;/ on the raliditi/ of the name. It 

 took us much wandering in the desert to induce us to accept this con- 

 clusion ; such names as <iallii were objectionable, but we finally 

 came to the conclusion stated in the Ilevuion — " No comj)romise is 

 possible." Some interesting cases in point are discussed in the Ent. 

 Mo. Mat/., October, 1903, p. 259. We find it there recorded that an 

 author spelt a name in eu/ht dift'erent ways. We can have no hesita- 

 tion in saying strict priority is the only solution. Nevertheless, some 

 of the names there quoted are so terribly barbarous that it is hard to 

 suppress one's desire for " purity of language." 



Some paragraphs are devoted to the meanmg of the word type. 

 It seemed doubtful whether there was any necessity for such a primary 

 disquisition. There has just come to hand, however, an illustration 

 that fully justifies the authors' spending some trouble to state the 

 point. We were somewhat astounded to read by an author of some 

 literary culture, " The utterly unscientific position that the first de- 

 scribed form must be regarded as the type can hardly have a better 

 illustration than is alibrded by this species (' Icarus '). The $ Icarus, 

 Rott., only differs from the <? by its border of orange spots on upper- 

 side. If it is held, as it certainly should be, that the name Icarus 

 must be applied to this unusual form, then Hiibner's name Alexis 

 must be restored for the true type," &c. It is clearly pointed out by 

 Rothschild and Jordan that the type, for purposes of nomenclature, is 

 the first specimen of the species to be named. It matters not what 

 var. or ab. of the species it may be, it is the type for the name — e.(/., 

 if it was called Icarus, then all the other specnnens of the same species 

 as that first specimen are also icarus. Such is one use of the word 

 type. Another use is to describe certain specimens as "typical forms" 



