il *. W. A. Lewis on 
our Nomenclature were made, with a view to the inquiry what 
meaning the Rule of Priority was intended to bear. 
Linné, who invented Nomenclature, and Fabricius, who first 
formulated rules for Entomological Nomenclature, did not in- 
vent, and never heard of'a rule of priority. Linné and Fabricius 
were very far from being guided by priority ; and, as is well 
known to every investigator, both of them changed names as and 
when they chose. For some forty years after the death of Linné, 
a general principle of priority seems never to have occurred to 
anyone ; that is to say, all the writers who described species in 
the infancy of our science did so before “priority” was born or 
thought of. On the one hand, then, they disregarded no law 
when they “re-named” a species ; and on the other hand, they 
did not pen their descriptions in any reliance on a rule which, 
in their time, had no existence. Thus they were in no respect 
wrongdoers ; but neither had their work the sanction of the 
law, which otherwise it might plausibly be urged we should be 
wrong now to modify to their disadvantage. This fact will 
supply some useful considerations when we come to consider 
the element of “justice” to the first nomenclator. The authors 
who gave specific names under no law of priority, were, 
besides Linné and Fabricius, De Geer, Poda, Scopoli, Schoeffer, 
Hufnagel, Schrank, Fuessly, Sulzer, Cramer, Stoll, Kuoch, 
Esper, Engramelle, Scriba, and Borkhausen ; and all from 
whose works the disused names are to-day being disinterred. 
Latreille is credited with originating the principle of main- 
taining the prior name, and the proposal appears to have been 
made shortly previous to 1825. ‘The proposal, when he made 
it, came as a perfect novelty, for the reception which it met 
with shows plainly that “priority” was a strange thing to all. 
Dejean, who at this period commenced his descriptive work on 
the whole of the Coleoptera,* takes notice of the new sugges- 
tion only to scout it, and (thus early in the bibliography of the 
science) declares himself as deciding questions of nomenclature 
on the principle of upholding names generally employed. In 
1834, Lacordaire wrote an essay} of an elaborate character, in 
which he set himself to prove that to endeavour to decide the 
priority of names was from the infirmities of the old descrip- 
tions impossible and a mere waste of time ; and he summed up 
his arguments in one objection, that the plan was completely 
and radically “impracticable in the application.” In these 
noteworthy observations he was warmly supported by Silber- 
mann ;{ and I think there is little doubt about the fact that 
Lacordaire had the suffrages of entomologists. Although the 
principle had been started some twenty years before, I believe 
it is the fact that until the British Association Rules of 1842, 
“priority” to intents and purposes remained a theory. Only 
* Species Général (1825), vol. i. p. x. 
¢ Silb. Revue, vol. iv. 233. 
t Silb. Revue, vol. iv, 241. 
PD TN 
on 
