Nomenclature and Priority. XV 
The fatality is that the cases where a change is made are, 
from the necessity of the thing, cases of a species which has 
many allies, and there one change most frequently necessitates 
several. It begins by some writer (whom the rest have followed) 
mis-identifying an original description and ascribing the name 
accompanying it to the wrong insect. This, of course, occurs 
most frequently where there is a real similarity which misleads. 
But the writer (whom the rest have followed) has most often 
not made one mistake of the kind alone. If he has taken 
species A. to be indicated by the description meant for B., he 
has of course ascribed some different name to B., which is thus 
also wrongly named; and the correction of the first error 
involves the correction of the second error as well. Very 
lucky are we, if it ends there. More frequently there is a 
much longer chain of “ rectifications,” each furnishing ground 
for fresh differences of opinion and consequently fresh confusion. 
Small wonder that, under these conditions, Mr. Newman 
remarks that “the object of names is frustrated;” or that 
another writer makes the comment that “‘ undertaken to make 
an end of confusion the synonymic lists have done nothing but 
augment it ;”* or that a third (Mr. Edwards), after considering 
the facts as they are, should sum up the prospect in these 
words :— 
“The result of all these efforts at stability, for that is the 
avowed object of the advocates of rigid priority of date, is 
extreme confusion, instead of the agreement hoped for when 
the code of the British Association was adopted, and students 
of one branch of entomology at least are at a loss to know 
where the nomenclature stands to-day, and are very certain 
that under the present order of things there will not be a name 
familiar to them that twenty or fifty years hence will not be 
supplanted under the claims of priority.” 
A fourtht has observed: “The rule of absolute priority, 
adopted as paramount law by a few investigators, has already 
brought about such a state of things, and alone is capable of 
continuing it . . . . Whatever the strict law of priority theo- 
retically should accomplish, we have seen but the beginning 
of the permanent confusion in which its practice results, and 
which its continuance as the fundamental law will hand down 
to the remotest generation.” 
On questions of this kind it is well to give chapter and verse, 
and there is no authority, I presume, better than a very 
prominent descriptive writer who has paid much attention to 
synonomy. 
Let me reproduce a few sentences selected from similar ones 
* Dr. Albert Breyer ; Ann. Soc. Ent. Belg. vol. xiy. ; pp. exxxi, exxxii. 
+ Mr. Mead ; Canadian Ent., vol. y, 108, 109, 
