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I am aware that, though this plan seems simple on the 

 surface, many difficulties would crop up in practice ; but I 

 do not believe that they would be insurmountable. Though 

 it is of equal concern to all zoologists — and botanists also — I 

 prefer to open the matter for discussion from the entomological 

 standpoint alone — to keep it within the scope of the Congress 

 of Entomology. 



To ascertain what the dithculties may be, it will be necessary 

 to outline a supposititious scheme and see how it would work. 

 The following scheme is put forward solely for this purpose — 

 and to excite discussion. I do not even suppose that it is 

 original. I believe that some such arrangement has been mooted 

 previously — and dropped. But many good schemes have 

 been adopted finally — after repeated rejections. 



Let us suppose that each country should agree to establish 

 a single journal in which all new diagnoses submitted to it 

 should appear, and that no new name should be accepted until 

 it had appeared (with a suitable diagnosis) in such journal. 

 The contents of these special journals should be purely diag- 

 nostical, but references might be given to other papers dealing 

 with biological matter and other observations of interest relating 

 to the species concerned. The diagnoses should be written in 

 certain specified languages — say, Latin, Enghsh, or French. 

 These diagnostic journals should not be privately owned con- 

 cerns, but should be managed and financed by a committee 

 of the Entomological (or Zoological) Societies of their respective 

 countries. They should be published at a price calculated 

 merely to cover the cost of production, and issued in sections, 

 so that specialists might (if they so wished) subscribe for the 

 particular sections only in which they were specially interested. 

 They should appear at frecpient and not necessarily regular 

 intervals — in fact, as often as sufficient material to fill a fascicule 

 of a recognised number of pages has been received for publica- 

 tion. Contributions sent in for publication should be dated 

 on receipt and printed strictly in that order. Thus, in the 

 possible event of the same species being described under different 

 names in the same fascicule, the one appearing on the earlier 

 page will have priority. In the case of separatel\ publi-hed 

 monographs, dealing with a large number of species, a ^inuil- 

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