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I have 8aid before — but there exist the much ohler and more 

 widely-accepted laws of Orthography and Philology, and the 

 law of Pinority by its own admission of its existence must 

 submit to laws older than itself. I contend that upon the 

 principle of binomial nomenclature laid down by its 

 founder Linne, we are bound to adopt the language which he 

 appointed for binomial nomenclature. As Agassiz stated in 

 the first words of the Preface to his " Xomenclator Zoologicus," 

 "Ante quam immortnlia Linnjei opera prolata svmt, nullis 

 legibus adstricta erat corporum organicoriim nomenclatura " 

 — " Primus proposuit Linnreus nomenclaturam certis legibus 

 constitutam, quas posteri plerique ratas inviolabilesque 

 habuerunt." The vast mass of describers of the present day 

 are in utter ignorance of the rules of binomial nomenclature 

 which were laid down by its founder. Many of Linne's rules 

 which are now completely ignored were nevei'theless thoroughly 

 sound, and whei-eas under his " Rule 225 " he excluded all 

 prefixes to existing generic names, such as " Pseudo " this and 

 " Pseudo " that, I wonder what he would have thought of the 

 modern "Para" and " Neo " prefixes'? Common-sense in- 

 spires the aphorisms of Baron R. Osten-Sacken, one of our 

 honorary members, when he says (Berl. Ent. Zeit. xl. 348), 

 " The most staunch adherent of the right of priority will 

 not maintain that we should consider as sacred every kind 

 of mis-spelling, and that for instance when Rondani called 

 BracJiineura a genus of Cecidonvjidx we should burden our 

 memory with this mis-spelling for ever." He further con- 

 tends that to justify a spelling it should be proved " that 

 it was introduced with a deliberate intention, and that it was 

 not a mere lapsus." In 1868 a late President of this Society, 

 Mr. Dunning, very cleverly dealt with the ridiculous perpetu- 

 ation of obvious errors in orthography or printers' errors ; 

 to quote one of his most irrefutable cases he cited a moth 

 named Jktcculatrix frangulella because the larva fed on 

 Rhaonnus fnmgula, but which the printers christened " fran- 

 gutelLi," and stated that it was years before the highest 

 Historian of the Tineina could be induced to abandon it ; 

 and there are some who still cling to the t. What would these 

 gentry have done if the printevs had made it frangnldla% 



