16 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



are known are ever changed ? Why are we told, for instance, 

 that the Hzard which we knew so long as Cyclodus gigas we 

 should henceforth call Tiliqua scincoides ? and why, again, should 

 we tack a man's name on to the end of it all, and say Tiliqua 

 scincoides, White ? The answer is tliat it is in obedience to the 

 law of priority. Zoologists agree that if anyone describe for the 

 first time any animal in such a way that future workers can 

 recognize with certainty what animal is meant, and if he apply 

 a name to this animal, that then this shall be the animal's name 

 henceforth and for ever. No matter how beautifully a sub- 

 sequent writer may illustrate, nor how fully and clearly he may 

 describe a species, if it has been already named he cannot change 

 its name. Such a rule is clearly of advantage, for what we want 

 is finality. At times the rule works badly in practice. The 

 original description may be so inadequate that it is almost im- 

 possible to be certain what animal was intended. Then again, 

 we have " lumpers " and " splitters " — that is, men who " lump " 

 under one name forms that others hold to be distinct, while the 

 " splitters " divide into several species forms which many consider 

 alike. One question which crops up in the Club occasionally is : 

 Have we two crows or one crow in Victoria ? The man who 

 says we have two species regards the man who says we have but 

 one as a " lumper," while the other regards him as a " splitter," 

 and, as the dictionary would say, the term is " applied in con- 

 tempt." 



To return to our lizard : it has a string of synonyms, since 

 several people, taking varieties to be distinct species, gave various 

 names. These have been " lumped," and the name applied by 

 the first describer has been adopted, and to show who this was 

 we put his name after it. Now, this addition of an author's 

 name is not intended in any way to honour the describer. In 

 fact, it at times draws attention to an egregious blunder that he 

 made in referring it to son)e entirely wrong position in tiie animal 

 kingdom. Thus, after a lot of work had been done on Aniphioxus 

 lanceolatvs it was found by an energetic fossicker that it had 

 already been named as Branchiostoma, classed with the 

 worms, and thus overlooked. To have changed the name 

 back to Branchiostoma and have dropped Amphioxus would 

 have caused terrible confusion, so the matter was solved 

 by calling the genus Branchiostoma ahd making Amphioxus 

 a sub-genus. But, if the name of the author is added not 

 in his honour, why is it done ? Simply for exactness. If 

 we say Tiliqita sciitcoides, White, we mean that animal to 

 which White applied the name, and not the entirely different 

 animal described and similarly named by Brown or Black. Two 

 different animals cannot have the same name, or nomenclature 

 would be useless. If two such have been accidentally named 



