2 go NATURAL SCIENCE. may, 



reading Dr. Field's statement, we are astonished to find that all the 

 giving seems to be the other way. We are to have the Zoological 

 Record completed and improved (and if anyone denies that it needs 

 this, we hope he will no longer keep silence) ; we are to have its 

 publication guaranteed and continued on the same lines as hitherto ; 

 our recorders and their editor are to be saved nine-tenths of their 

 drudgery, and yet to be paid no less ; and, in return for all this, the 

 Zoological Society will actually be asked to spend less money than 

 it loses at present. We have had opportunities of cross-examining 

 Dr. Field, we are convinced of his good faith, and we see that he is 

 in a position to bring his promises to performance. 



A Paleontologist on Zoological System. 



We are pleased to be able to present our readers in this number, 

 through the kindness of Professor Karl von Zittel, with a translation 

 of the address which he delivered to the International Congress of 

 Geologists last year. It is always interesting to hear the opinion of 

 an acknowledged leader of his science on such matters of general 

 importance, and Professor von Zittel's warning is not the least of the 

 benefits arising from the recent assembly. 



We are struck by the passage in which he compares the scrupu- 

 lous anxiety that formerly accompanied the establishment of a new 

 genus with the reckless abandonment in which genera are scattered 

 abroad to-day. It is true that, when we regard the history of scientific 

 nomenclature, we are unable to acquit even the older writers of too 

 great indulgence in an irresponsible liberty ; and it must be confessed, 

 even by Professor von Zittel, that many of the difficulties under which 

 we now labour are due to authors, who may, indeed, have been very 

 careful to see that their genera were really new, but who did not take 

 such pains as would ensure those new genera being understood by 

 their successors. Nevertheless, it is just as well that our younger 

 writers should have brought home to them a due sense of the extreme 

 reponsibility that attaches to the publication of a new generic or 

 specific name. A name once published is irrevocable ; it may be 

 right or wrong, but it can never be withdrawn ; it remains a permanent 

 addition to the labour of future investigators, and if wrong, then an 

 irremovable stumbling-block. 



The general question, phylogenetic research and the reconstruc- 

 tion of our classifications, though one of enormous importance, is so 

 vast that we dare not enter upon it in a casual note. This only we 

 would venture to say in extension and elucidation of the Professor's 

 remarks. Darwinism and the Doctrine of Descent came upon the 

 majority of scientific workers, especially on the describers and the 

 systematists, almost too suddenly, and the momentum of its impact 

 seems to have carried many of them off their feet. It was at once 

 supposed that traces of descent were to be found everywhere by simple 

 inspection. Hence a rashness in suggesting relationships on the 



