Nomenclature and Priority. vil 
up by a committee (so far as I am aware) in operation in 
France, but a translation of the Dresden code was printed and 
distributed with their Proceedings by the Entomological Society 
of France and the Entomological Society of Lyon. 
The next important event after the Dresden code of 1858 
was Dr. Staudinger’s Catalogue of 1861, which I (in common 
with others) take as the starting-point of the modern objection- 
able practices. Before this, forgotten names had been here and 
there brought up in their monographs by different entomolo- 
gists, and on no system in particular. Nemo repente fit turpis- 
simus ; I do not say Staudinger commenced all of a sudden 
a practice totally unheard of. But Staudinger’s 1861 Catalogue 
was the first example of the resurrectionary literature which has 
since become familiar. It is striking to find this work published 
at Dresden in only the third year after the promulgation of the 
code. 
From 1861 to 1871 the tide went in the direction of restoring 
the earliest discoverable names. It is sufficient to mention the 
names of Gemminger and von Harold, the late Mr. Crotch, 
Mr. Scudder, and Mr. Kirby to recall that the practice of 
“resurrection” resulted in the production of several volumes. 
In 1865 the British Association appointed a committee, which 
enacted with some slight alterations the rules of 1842 over 
again. These 1865 rules, however, were not the justification 
of practices which commenced in 1861, and it is well known 
that no reconsideration of the priority rule took place. The 
attention of the framers of the rules was given to the settle- 
ment of certain minor details. 
If, however, the case had been otherwise, and we had to look 
upon the rules of 1865 as confirming “ priority” pure and simple, 
which from the known opinions of some who took part in 
framing them we should be wrong in doing, yet the considera- 
tion remains that 1865 was too early to see this subject as it 
now is. Gemminger and von Harold were yet to publish their 
Munich Catalogue (not to mention other Coleopterological 
lists which had not then seen the light). Staudinger and 
Wocke’s second Catalogue was yet to gild the fine gold of their 
first edition, and this work, with Mr. Kirby’s Catalogue of 
Diurnal Lepidoptera, had not then proved how the early descrip- 
tions baffle the operation of “ priority.” Especially was it not 
then discovered that the early nomenclature itself is less con- 
tradictory and discordant than the commentaries and practice of 
editors of catalogues and other writers on synonymy. For it 
has only recently become apparent that the same reasons which 
make one author accept a name as “ prior” make another reject 
it, and that this action on opposite or conflicting principles is 
producing irretrievable injury to the stability of our nomen- 
elature. The question could never before be seen in the light 
in which now we see it, and such reasons have of late years 
