Nomenclature and Priority. xix 
one with many. The history of it shows how one may be 
mistaken in estimating the strong points of an adversary’s 
case ; for the argument, which made me anxious, is one which 
nearly all those who have come forward on the matter have 
agreed in condemning, and which, in two noteworthy instances, 
writers on the opposite side have repudiated. Amidst what I 
may term the chorus of agreement on this matter a discordant 
voice arises. Dr. Gray announces that the protest which has 
received the signatures of a majority of this Society ‘“‘is 
decidedly against all proper treatment of our predecessors,” 
and Mr. E. C. Rye apparently considers that, by quoting this 
statement, he can administer such a knock-down blow to all of 
us that he copies it out after his manner in the Entomologist’s 
Annual for 1873. 
Dr. Gray on this reason brings himself to the conclusion that 
the protest which we signed “ can only have been put forward 
by mere butterfly collectors who have had no proper scientific 
training.” It would not be worth while to take seriously what 
I believe to be a purely characteristic flourish ; the more so as 
the list of names appended to the protest (which speaks for 
itself) was published in the same volume.* But I think we 
shall see before getting much farther how much this “justice 
to predecessors” is worth as an argument. 
It seems necessary to observe that this is a matter on which 
one entomologist with a head on his shoulders is, when he 
knows the facts, as good a judge as another. The contrary 
notion, 7. e., that a strongly-worded phrase or two from an 
experienced entomologist can countervail good reasons adduced 
by an inexperienced amateur, may have arisen naturally enough 
out of the associations of years, but I submit will not bear 
examination. This is not a question of zoological science. If 
it were, some might perhaps hesitate before putting forward 
an opinion opposed, for instance, to Dr. Gray’s. It is only 
because the influence of personal authority on such a point as 
this is of the lightest, that I do not vouch on the other side 
the names of entomologists who say the opposite. ‘The number 
of those names is large, and their authority (on matters where 
authority has weight) is of the highest ; but I shall not, on my 
part at least, turn aside to bring forward opinions merely as 
such. It may be that this question is eminently one which 
those who are not themselves nomenclators should take part in 
deciding; for circumstances, I think, show that those who have 
described species themselves may see these questions from a 
point of view which is not always that of entomologists at large. 
Authors alone, indeed, are little likely to arrive at a settlement; 
and most of them have works which make their writers tender 
on controversial points. However that may be, two or three 
SS SS sss 
* See Ent. Annual, 1873, ad jinem. 
b2 
