THE 



ZOOLOGICAL JOURNAL. 



January, 1825. 



Art. LIV. Some Remarks on the Nomenclature of the 

 Gryllina q/*MacLeay, &c. with the Characters of a new 

 genus in that tribe. By the Rev. William Kirby, 

 M.A. F.R.SfL.S. 



The Nomenclature of any Science, though not certainly of the 

 Jirst importance, ought not however to be neglected ; for that 

 adage of Linne is most true — Nomina si nescis perit et cognitio 

 rerum. — While things are without names they are comparatively 

 unknown; but as soon as a name is imposed, it imparts as it weie 

 a life and being to an object that it had not before. Yet, im- 

 portant as its Nomenclature to any Science confessedly is, how 

 little, in general, has it been attended to ! With the exception 

 of Chemistry, in which a systematic plan has been adopted with 

 admirable effect, almost every other science is at sea in this respect, 

 at the mercy of the winds and waves ; and the imposition of 

 names, which ought to be regulated by fixed and acknowledged 

 laws, is left to the fancy or crude conceptions of every individual. 

 If we look only at Anatomy, a science so important to be made 

 easy of comprehension, how perplexed and perplexing is its tech- 

 nical language, and how little of concinnity and harmony does it 

 exhibit ! All this has arisen from its having been constructed at 

 different times by different persons, who had no common plan or 

 system "before them, to serve as a guide. 



Linne, in his Philosophia Botanica^ has given many excellent 

 rules for the formation of the names of genera, but he constructed 



Vol. I. 2 g 



