100 



^vithout a description. The moment, however, that we get beyond 

 a uninomial nomenclature, and group species together under a 

 common term, we step into the region of classification, however 

 rudimentary, for classification consists of such grouping of 

 species, though the details always tend to become more and more 

 complicated as our knowledge extends. It has been suggested 

 that the first name by which a species was described, generic and 

 specific, should be its permanent name, however it may after- 

 wards be classified ; but this plan would surely make classifica- 

 tion and nomenclature not merely unconnected, but directly 

 antagonistic, and would be the fruitful parent of confusion and 

 entanglements many times worse than those which it was de- 

 signed to avoid. Is it, however, too late to go back, for purposes 

 of nomenclature only, to the Linnean terminology, calling all 

 Butterflies Papilio, all Hawk-moths Sphinx, and so on through 

 the other orders ? Some changes would doubtless be involved, 

 but only such as ought never to have been necessary at all, for 

 nothing more would be needed than slightly to extend the 

 universally-accepted regulation that the same specific name 

 must not be applied to two species in the same genus, by carry- 

 ing back the idea of genus, in the sense of the division next above 

 species, to its original inception, instead of leaving it, as it is 

 at present, a constantly varying and ever more variable quantity. 

 Indeed, in this matter I do not see where else a line can be 

 drawn. At present, if I speak of a species as Melitœa cynthia, 

 it means a definite thing, and if I discovered another species 

 connected with even the most remote group of the genus, I 

 should not be at liberty to name it also cynthia ; but if I found 

 it necessary — as is highly probable — to divide the genus into 

 three, I should be free (if I were possessed by a demon of mis- 

 chief) to call a newly-discovered species in one of the other 

 genera cynthia, to the hopeless confusion of all lepidopterists 

 who had not made a special study of the group ; and this con- 

 fusion would be increased by the fact that the original cynthia 

 would no longer be in the genus Melitcea at all, which would of 

 necessity be restricted to the group containing cinxia. What 

 could be more ridiculous or more futile ? Better ten thousand 

 times to lay down a rule once for all, that no two species in the 

 same Linnean division can have the same name, and that a 



