Nomenclature and Priority. Vv 
to acquiesce in, but eager to further, the ascendancy of one 
or the other of these leaders. I have once before quoted 
Mr. Stainton’s words on “the extreme seclusion” in which our 
entomologists lived. ‘“ Except a few of the leaders,”* he says, 
*‘ literally no one knew anything.” It is a fair argument which 
should give offence to no one, that a rule imposed when our 
science was in this obscured condition may well be open to 
review to-day, when a very large class of entomologists is, as I 
at least will assert, competent to form a sound and independent 
judgment on this matter. 
But, with these reservations left aside, it must never be 
overlooked that we are viewing this question in the light of 
the fresh experience of more than a generation, and a gene- 
ration, moreover, which has surpassed in results—and con- 
sequently been more prolific of experience than—the whole 
preceding period. The legislators of 1842 had made the dis- 
covery that the names employed here were different from those 
employed elsewhere, and they enacted a rule to cure the evil. 
The discovery which we in our turn have recently made is, it 
seems to me, as fresh a matter as that which opened the eyes 
of those who promoted the rules. We discovered between 
three and four years ago that the bare rule of priority (as 
construed now) has let in practices which promote and do not 
dissipate confusion. I put this as a discovery, and that word 
implies that in my judgment the truth of it is established. 
The main point, indeed, I rely on not as as a prophecy or a 
predilection, but as a fact. But we have at present to consider 
a little further the historical aspect of the case. 
In 1845, the British Association Rule was adopted by the 
American Association of Geologists and Naturalists. They 
seem to have merely “ followed suit,” and I think we are well 
justified in assuming (what appears to be confirmed by the 
present position of the question in America) that the rule of 
priority in America meant whatever it meant in Europe—no 
more and no less. 
Naturalists who confined their attention to the British Fauna 
had little temptation to concern themselves with foreign books ; 
they would have had to pick out the British species from a 
crowd of non-British. The central European Fauna is, how- 
ever, in no respect limited by political boundaries, and the 
descriptive work which dealt with German insects answered 
pretty well for French. To the interchange of communication 
and common circulation of some descriptive works it is to be 
attributed that the position of nomenclature on the Continent 
gave less trouble than did ours; and to this circumstance in 
turn it may be owing that no rules for nomenclature were made 
on the Continent until many years later. By the year 1858, 
however, many on the Continent awakened to the circumstance 
* Ent. Weekly Intelligencer, vol. y. p. 113, 
