103 



assure those who adopt the " non possumus " attitude that there 

 is not the remotest chance of peace until they abandon it. I 

 beheve I have read all, or nearly all, that has been written on 

 the other side, and m\- profound respect, and in some cases 

 jîersonal friendship, for the writers must not prevent my charac- 

 terising it as special pleading, sometimes very ingenious, and 

 often dehghtful to read, but singularly unconvincing to an}' one 

 not predetermined to be convinced. " Wh}' " (as the President 

 of the Entomological Society of London pertinently asked on a 

 recent occasion) " should educated people be condemned to the 

 l^erpetual use of barbarisms, merely because the original authors 

 of names didn't know what they were talking about ? " and 

 wh\-, I should like to add, should not these monuments of ignor- 

 ance be allowed to be set right, even if only out of respect for the 

 authors themselves ? By all means let the original author get 

 the credit (whatever it is) of the emended name ; those who 

 refuse to endorse these barbarisms with pen or tongue would 

 be the last to grudge him that poor honour, and would feel it a 

 very small price to pay for the happiness of being rid of them 

 for ever. The general adoj)tion of the Rules of the " Merton " 

 Code on this subject appears to me to aftord the onl}' prospect 

 of peace or permanence. It should also be borne in mind that 

 the princi])le of the })ermis>ibilit\- of emendation in orthography 

 was fully recognised by the ñrst International Congress of 

 Entomology, and if emendation is permissible in this particular, 

 it is difftcult to see why it is not equallx' permissible in the matter 

 of words incorrectly formed or htted with a wrong termination. 

 Specific names formed from the names of places should be made 

 to end in ensis, those taken from the surnanus of persons should 

 be in the genitive, and it would be appropriate if in the case of 

 ladies the genitive assumed a feminine form : for instanci-, 

 Plebeius nicholli was named after its discoverer, the well-kuowii 

 lepidopterist, Mrs. Nicholl — the compliment would have bei n 

 more obvious had it been named Plebeius nichollce. When Chris- 

 tian names are emplo\ed the case seems somewhat different. 

 "Alicia" or "Emilia," in the nominative, seem as permissible 

 as " Phrebe " or " Iris." 



Two other cases have been suggested in wiiii h ¡xrhctlx' 

 legitimate and pronounceable nanus might have to be regarded 



