March, 1895. CORRESPONDENCE. 21 5 



Anlagen, Rudiments, and Blasts. 



Dr. Herbert Hurst, even though he adduces learnedly the Latin 

 derivation, does nothing to clear the issues. To include Darwin among " ignorant 

 blunderers" may be a triumph of scholarship; it does not affect the fact that for 

 all future time he has impressed upon the English word " rudiment " the general 

 idea of incompleteness to the exclusion of distinction between incompleteness that 

 is vestigial and incompleteness that is incipient. Litem scripta manet, at least when 

 Darwin is the writer. Personally I think it a convenience that we should now have 

 a word expressing incompleteness without prejudice to the nature of the incomplete- 

 ness. The word " vestige " admirably expresses reduced or degenerate completeness. 

 There is wanted a word to express incipient completeness, especially in the familiar 

 case of embryonic incompleteness. Whether or no my suggestion " blast," with its 

 obvious reference to the mesoblasts and the epiblasts, will serve, remains to be seen. 

 I wrote my article " Anlagen " to invite comment on the point ; and I am indebted to 

 Dr. Hurst for his criticism, although it seems to me barren. 



P. Chalmers Mitchell. 



The Use and Abuse of Names. 



The question which I raised in your January number is too important to be 

 buried under a rhetorical blanket. The point which I made was a very simple one. 

 In the year of grace 1894 two distinguished naturalists, to both of whom science is 

 under deep obligations, describe the same skins preserved in the same museum, and give 

 more than sixty per cent, of them different names. 



My contention is that, inasmuch as names are meant to assist men in arranging 

 and finding their knowledge, this can only be justified on the ground that it is wise 

 to have as many indices to knowledge and as many plans of naming and arranging 

 facts as there are naturalists. 



I am not so unreasonable as to suggest that when forms increase, especially 

 when the increase is rapid, we must not modify our nomenclature; but in the case 

 I mention there was no increase of forms. The very same skins in the very same 

 museum are given different names in the very same year. If a roll call of the lizards 

 is made next year in the Limbo to which lizards go, no lizard will know what his name 

 is, and there may be grave confusion in that tropical region where salamanders 

 ought to be happy. It will be much better to read out " a mere list of numbers " — 

 a solution which startles you — than having to search for the personality of " the old 

 serpent " in a dozen scientific lists. The cause of our trouble is very largely due to 

 the factitious and quite absurd credit which was supposed to attach, until a short 

 time ago, to the man who was not merely lucky enough to give us some new facts, 

 but wicked enough to introduce a new name, especially a new generic name, without 

 a real necessity, and from some wanton craving for notoriety. 



This absurdity is now largely obsolete, and, instead of a wreath of olive, a 

 scorpion is the prize which most sensible people would award to the man who 

 coins an unnecessary name, and loads our groaning memories with additional 

 burdens. 



In your remarks you distinguish between a privately-issued book and a book 

 published by a museum. I can make no such distinction. When a book is published 

 it is no longer a private matter, and the man who, either from deliberate motives, 

 from ignorance, or from carelessness, adds books to the world which distort or 

 confuse our knowledge instead of illuminating it, is a scientific criminal. 



You add that it would be intolerable if in a catalogue published in a museum or 

 in a museum collection such, discrepancies of nomenclature as I have mentioned were 

 to occur. Don't they occur? I know one very large museum (the best and the 

 best-arranged museum altogether in the world) in which there are some very curious 

 examples of labelling the same creatures with different names. This is the case 

 both among fossil and among recent specimens, but it becomes rather epidemic when 

 fossil and recent specimens are examined together. This, however, involves another 

 issue to which I should like to call attention in your pages some time, namely, the 



