NOMRNCLATI'HK 



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which appeal to the j^eueral worker, and to one outside, shall we say, 

 the official circle. 



At the present time it is practically a truism to state that authors 

 bestow names at their own sweet will, without let or hindrance, and 

 with no guide hut their own prejudices, or even aberrant idiosyncrasies, 

 with the result we often get small groups of letters, we cannot call 

 them words, which convey no indication of the object they were 

 intended to represent, and are so difficult to memorise that they are a 

 grave detriment to the progress of science on account of the delays 

 they cause in searching out their originally intended signification, if 

 they had one. It is true there ai-e codes of so-called rules, some 

 intended to be of general application in all branches of Zoology, such 

 as those issued by the International Zoological Congress, and others 

 like the Merton Rules, compiled by Lord Walsingham and John 

 Hartley Durrant, intended as a guide for Nomenclature to their own 

 particular branch of Zoology, the Micro-Lepidoptera. All these rules 

 are complicated, many of them made with the intention of altering, 

 so-called correcting, rectifying, improving, names which have been 

 thought to be wrongly constructed or even misapplied. Not a few of these 

 rules it is difficult to interpret, and scarcely two independent workers 

 translate them into practice in the same way ; even when appeals are 

 made to the existing Committee of the International Zoological 

 Congress, the ignorance of the full siunilicance of a rule is often 

 apparent l)y an award obviously not in accord with some other rule, 

 which partly covers the ca.se. This was well shown in a recent appeal 

 made in the Order Diptera. Individual workers use these rules or not, 

 as they think fit, interpret them according to their own views, and 

 appeals to authority are rarely made, while decisions are frequently 

 not adhered to when given. 



To us, as entomologists, it would seem advisable to have a separate 

 Committee of Appeal composed of entomologists pure and simple, 

 since the objects dealt with in the study of insects so vastly outnumber 

 those in nil other branches of Zoology, as a well-known worker, tersely 

 put it the other day, "The part is greater than the whole." The 

 present time seems most opportune. The International Congress of 

 Rntomology has now become an established body. All countries have 

 given in their adherence to it, it is meeting in this country where the 

 consideration of nomenclature has always been to the fore, and all our 

 own great workers and specialists, as well as the foremost men from 

 the continent and from America, are among the recognised delegates. 



From what has occurred during the past few years in the long list 

 of absurd, puerile, inappropriate, and in a few instances discreditable 

 names which have been bestowed, it is quite apparent that there should 

 exist a supreme Committee of Appeal, to whom any new names could 

 be submitted if there were any doubt as to their impropriety, either 

 from a structural (philological) defect, an offensive (social, moral, 

 political, personal, etc.) signification, or from a synonymic point of 

 view, etc. This should be the primary object of the appointment of 

 this Committee, */:., to deal with the Nomenclature of the future with 

 a view to the simplification and reduction of the synonymy, and in no 

 way to hamper or restrict the present methods of individual work. 

 Workers will bestow names in the future, as they have done in the 

 past, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the names will be as 



