142 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol. VI, 



REPORT or THE COMMITTEE ON NOMENCLATURE. 



Your Committee on Nomenclature has to report that no questions 

 have been submitted to it for consideration during the past year. 



The discussion of the idea of nomina conservanda has been much in 

 evidence of late, and the members of the committee have very decided 

 personal opinions upon that subject. They realize, however, that any 

 expression of their opinion as a committee would have no more weight 

 than the sum total of their individual views, and therefore do not 

 present any recommendation on the subject. Attention should be 

 called to the point, however, that in the numerous lists of workers 

 published, who have expressed themselves on the subject, many are 

 morphologists only secondarily interested in questions of nomenclature, 

 and rarely doing anything themselves in this subject. It would seem 

 that the opinions of this class should hardly be given equal weight with 

 those offered by persons constantly engaged in systematic work and 

 who are therefore much more familiar with the difficulties constantly 

 presenting themselves under either method. 



It may also be appropriate here to call attention to earlier proposals 

 nearly forty years ago, for the establishment of nomina conservanda 

 which were favorably received at first, and to some extent adopted for 

 a few years, but generally abandoned after a time. (Rules of Nomen- 

 clature as avithorized to be published bv the Entomological Club, 

 A. A. A. S., July, 1877). 



Your committee is inclined to regard the International Code as 

 the one to accept in all cases, representing as it appears to, the formu- 

 lated opinions of the largest body of scientific zoological workers in the 

 world, and therefore presenting the largest number of supporters, to 

 serve as a nucleus around which scientific opinion at large should 

 concentrate and crystallize. They regret, however, that recent inter- 

 pretations of the code seem to imply that a generic name accompanied 

 by more or less of a description, but without reference either by name, 

 figure, description or otherwise to any described and named species of 

 animal, should be held as valid. They do not feel that this is any real 

 use of a binomial nomenclature, and would welcome a ruling that any 

 generic name to be applicable to any animal must be published in con- 

 nection with some described or otherwise clearly indicated species, and 

 that all generic names not so pubhshed should be regarded as 

 nomina nuda. Signed, 



H. T. Fernald, 

 E. P. Felt, 



T. D. A. COCKERELL.- 



The report of the Committee on Nomenclature was accepted 

 and ordered printed. 



The following motion presented by Philip P. Calvert and 

 seconded by F. L. Washburn was presented : 



Moved that it is the sense of this meeting of the Entomolog- 

 ical Society of America that the use of the International Code 



