XVill Mis. W. A. Lewis on 
The works which have been mentioned and others such as 
those, it is said, must be ransacked and scrutinized with the 
object of disinterring the names found there, to replace the 
names in use! Now that we are fresh from examining a few 
of these books can we treat with gravity such a proposition 
as this? What could prompt the framers of any rules to set 
our entomologists to such House of Detention work? Have 
our most laborious writers nothing better to occupy themselves 
with than the puzzling out of these conundrums? What 
shadow of obligation is there that author after author should 
sharpen his wits to form a theory about the meaning of this or 
that third or fifth rate author’s bad descriptions ? 
Things to me somewhat incomprehensible have been written 
on this point. It is said that “the existence of synonymy is 
too often owing to what are actual crimes against science,” and 
that “when an entomologist describes an insect as new, with- 
out using every endeavour that is humanly possible to discover 
whether it be not already described, he commits one of the 
greatest crimes against science.” I have elsewhere* described 
this language as of the high-falutin order, and must confess to 
experiencing some impatience at having soberly to reply to 
such declarations. Why should anybody be required to wade 
through “a chaos of blunders” before he is permitted to give 
to the world his own elucidations (or opinions for that matter) 
on a subject he may have investigated? Considering that 
this kind of travaux forcés has been in fact shunned by a 
crowd of prominent writers, I confess to further impatience 
when, at this time of day, ‘‘ crimes” are constructed out of the 
practice which has been prevalent during all but the most 
recent period of modern entomological literature. The cha- 
racter of the old works has been examined; and before we 
censure those to whom we are beholden for the more modern 
(from which, in fact, we derive the degree of enlightenment 
we possess), for myself, at least, I should like to hear some 
good reason adduced. If every writer were forced to guess 
for himself the riddles provided for his entertainment by the 
first nomenclators, many would stop there and never get any 
further. 
The Demand for “ Justice” to the first Nomenclator 
cannot prevail, 
Let me now pass on to take notice of an objection, viz., that 
if we deviate from absolute priority per se, we are wanting in 
“justice to the first nomenclator.” At a very early stage of 
the controversy (in the course of some remarks published in 
the Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine)t I said that, being an 
ad populum argument, I feared this might prove an influential 
* Discussion of the Law of Priority in Entomological Nomenclature, 
p. 5, &c. 
t+ Entom, Monthly Mag. vol, viii. pp. 1—5. 
