SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STANDARDIZATION OF 
TECHNICAL TERMS IN ENTOMOLOGY.* 
By G. C. Crampton, Ph. D. 
The ever increasing confusion in the application of anatom- 
ical terminology in entomology, is rapidly producing an ab- 
solutely intolerable state of affairs, and unless steps toward 
reform are soon taken, it will eventually become practically 
impossible to make use of the present system of terminology, 
in comparative morphological work. Such chaotic and ab- 
solutely needless confusion, would not for a moment be toler- 
ated in any other branch of research, and it is difficult to under- 
stand why entomologists are supinely indifferent to a state of 
affairs which can hardly be said to reflect credit upon their scien- 
tific spirit or intelligence. If students of mammalian anatomy, 
for example, were to apply the term ‘‘mentum”’ to the back 
of the head in lemurs, to the top of the head in monkeys to the 
forehead in baboons, to the nose in higher apes, and to the chin 
in man, the storm of protest which such a course of procedure 
would arouse, can be easily imagined; yet entomologists may 
with impunity perpetrate a far more astoundingly flagrant 
manipulation of anatomical terminology than that cited in 
the foregoing hypothetical case, and no one is moved to even 
mildly protest! 
Lest the preceding statement should seem slightly over- 
drawn, one of several similar instances of remarkable entomol- 
ogical usage which suggest themselves, may be cited as an 
illustration. The term “squama,’’ for example, is applied to 
the sclerites of the labium and maxilla of Odonata, to the term- 
inal sclerite of the male’s genital claspers in Bombide, to the 
lens-shaped ‘‘first’’ abdominal segment of Formicide, to one 
or both calyptra of Diptera, to the tegule of Hymenoptera and 
Lepidoptera, to various squamiform structures of certain 
insects, to the clothing scales of others, etc. etc., ‘“‘ad infinitum!’’ 
We thus have structures located at opposite ends of the body, 
together with a generous intersprinkling of intermediate points, 
to which the term “‘squama’”’ is applied. If the object of en- 
*Contribution from the Entomological Laboratory of the Massachusetts 
Agricultural College, Amherst, Mass. 
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