96 



to let the name in current use b}^ the teaching profession follow 

 in brackets. This could be no real hardship to any one, and it might 

 possibly meet the objections of the learned professors who do not 

 happen to be specialists in particular branches of natural history. 

 All sections of workers should remember that the Code was formed 

 in order to obtain a stable nomenclature, and that it is steadily 

 working in that direction, but the end cannot be obtained in a 

 decade. Nature works slowly, and we should do well to follow 

 her example. We have to deal with avast amount of literature, 

 extending over one hundred and fifty years, and it is only as the 

 systematist, in his monographs or other work, investigates this 

 mass of literature, that stability will be obtained, for it should be 

 borne in mind that it is the systematist who must be in the end 

 the final court of appeal, at least in the elucidation of species, 

 and therefore in the elucidation of the names of species. 



It is said that changes of names bother those who are not 

 specialists, but I have little doubt that the suggestion of " nomina 

 conservanda " in combination with the Law of Priority would be 

 infinitely more perplexing, whilst it would be an open door for 

 endless changes. The fact that the number of species and 

 genera in Entomology far outweighs the number of living forms 

 that belong to the whole of the other classes of the animal king- 

 dom is ample justification for the considerable extension of the 

 powers and status of the Committee formed at our first Interna- 

 tional Congress as suggested by my resolution, and I trust that 

 this second Congress will approve of the resolution of the Ento- 

 mological Society of London that I have had the honour of 

 moving. 



