Introduction. v 



now taken from the insulated post it formerly occupied, and 

 restored to its proper rank. The views of Adanson have 

 been continued, extended and improved by a succession 

 of labourers in this department of science, and the valuable 

 facts they have established will hand down their names with 

 honour to posterity. 



Much confusion unfortunately still exists in another re- 

 spect, not only in Zoology, but in every branch of natural 

 history, and must continue till some better principles of 

 Nomenclature shall, by general consent, be adopted in this 

 and the sister sciences. Not only are many of the terms em- 

 ployed radically defective and at variance with all sound 

 rules of grammar and etymology, and chosen, one would 

 think, in some instances from the worst words of the worst 

 writers, obsolete and cacophonous, but the student is per- 

 plexed by the intolerable multitude of unnecessary syno- 

 nyms with which half the known subjects of these sciences 

 are overwhelmed. Arbitrary changes are too often made in 

 names long since fixed to particular objects by their original 

 discoverers, with no apparent view, but to gratify a silly 

 personal vanity ; " that's villainous, and shows a pitiful 

 ambition in the fool that uses it." The Zoological Journal 

 will always be open to memoirs on this subject, and we are 

 confident that incalculable benefit will accrue to the science 

 of natural history in general, from dispassionate discussions 

 on the true principles of Nomenclature! 



Entire translations or abstracts (as their importance may 

 require) of foreign papers, which either contain new matter, 

 or are rendered interesting by the relation of remarkable 

 facts, or the developement of new views connected with 

 Zoology, will follow the original Memoirs and Monographs, 

 and our readers will thus be regularly furnished with detailed 

 accounts of the most important discoveries made in the 

 science by their fellow labourers on the continents both of 

 the Old and New World. The proceedings of learned 



