NOTES, CAPTURES, ETC. 47 



the new Eupithecia described in your columns last October ; Mr. 

 C. S. Gregson (who, by the way, says in his recent book on 

 the subject that " anything will do for a name ") has called 

 it Eupithecia curzoni. This is not good Latin, and should, 

 of course, have been curzonensis ; yet, according to the 

 " inexorable law of priority,'' or at least according to Dr. 

 Staudinger's canon (referred to by Mr. South in his preface), the 

 species must remain E curzoni till the end of time, in spite of 

 the fact that the Latin is bad, and the name about as mean- 

 ingless as a name can possibly be. This is the weakness of 

 the law of priority. A bad name once given can never be 

 changed for a good one. Confusion is thereby certainly avoided, 

 yet it is very doubtful whether science is bettered. But why 

 did Mr. Gregson call the species curzoni at all ? He gives us 

 his reason ; he named it in honour of his friend Mr. Roper- 

 Curzon, from whom he received a most liberal supply of perfect 

 insects and larvae. All honour where honour is due certainly, 

 but it is, all the same, a very bad principle of naming to call a 

 species after an individual. If such a principle were generally 

 adopted, then anything would do for a name so long as it had a 

 Latin termination. Is the name to have any meaning ? If not, 

 a system of giving a number or letter to each species, such as is 

 in vogue with astronomers for denoting particular stars, would be 

 the simplest, shortest, and most methodical. But if the specific 

 name is to have any meaning at all, it ought to have as much 

 meaning as possible. Now when an insect is named after an 

 individual, e. g., Pieris spilleri, recently described in the * Ento- 

 mologist,' we learn nothing about it from its name beyond the 

 mere fact that a certain collector some time or other had the 

 good luck to be the first to capture it. Perhaps to infer even so 

 much as that from the name would be wrong, e.g., when one 

 entomologist, describing a species, gives it a name in honour of a 

 friend. A name should, if possible, serve as a description, as it 

 does roughly in the cases of Vanessa c-album, Smerinthus 

 ocellatus, Macroglossa bombyliformis, Plusia gamma, &c. It may 

 be difiicult nowadays to find a descriptive epithet for a new 

 species which is not already in use ; but this should, whenever 

 possible, be our principle in nomenclature. Failing this, the 

 insects can be called after a marked or peculiar habit, e.g., 

 Odonestis potatoria, or after the usual food-plant, as has been done 



