INTRODUCTION. 81 
the practice itself must be wholly abandoned. We 
invoke the attention of zoologists to the subject, and 
ask their aid in endeavoring to effect a change. 
Having spoken thus freely of some of the evils 
which impede the progress of zoology, alluded to 
then- causes, and suggested such remedies as are 
practicable in the department which we have under- 
taken, — having, moreover, condemned certain prac- 
tices which prominent zoologists of the time receive 
with favor, — we are quite prepared to be subjected 
to the test of our own rules. It may be, that we have 
not been governed by the principles which we recom- 
mend to others. Of this we leave others to judge. 
If it should be so, however, it will not detract from 
their utility, but only show that we have erred with 
the best intentions, and that instances often arise in 
which not only ourselves, but the best-informed zoolo- 
gists may form incorrect conclusions. We do not 
Ctti, 7th, and 8th volumes of the Transactions of the American Philosophi- 
cal Society, more than one hundred instances occur of the use of specific 
terms derived from the names of the author's friends and correspondents, 
and these mostly applied to the species of one family of mollusks. In a 
memoir in the seventh volume of the Journal of the Plnladelphia Academy 
of Natural Sciences, the name ,of an English botanist is applied in the 
same manner no less than twelve times hi as many different genera of 
shells. The geologists, we fear, have been seduced by these bad exam- 
ples, for one of the most distinguished of them, in a memoir in the Trans- 
actions of the American Geological Association, having occasion to pro- 
pose five new species, has "dedicated" four of them to other geologists. 
Names derived from countries, mountains, rivers, &c, which are also 
objectionable, are used witli great freedom, and numerous examples of 
them occur in the same memoirs. 
vol. i. 22 
