XXll &.. W. A. Lewis on 
mistakes. Linné’s descriptions are vague; but they certainly 
did not always admit of being interpreted as his successors did 
interpret them. In those cases it was open to a later investi- 
gator to correct the wrong interpretation, and that has long ago 
been done; but in other cases where the successors of Linné 
came to different identifications, no one can say who was right. 
No one could say at the time, and what could not be decided at 
the time has generally not become any clearer since, 
Weare now onthe consideration of “justice” to the nomenclator. 
I understand that phrase to mean giving to the nomenclator as 
much as he deserves, not to mean falling down and worshipping 
the oldest describers. ‘The Ashantees, when they abase them- 
selves before a fetish, (and subject themselves to a vast deal of 
inconvenience in the service,) no doubt consider they are doing 
“justice” to the fetish. That, however, only takes place while 
the fetish is credited with the possession of authority and other 
dignified attributes. When the course of events has convinced 
the devotee that his fetish is only remnants and rubbish, the 
Ashantee is reported to lose all respect for his fetish, and, in- 
deed, to ignore him altogether. But the Ashantee is a barbarian 
of Africa,—and acts on principles essentially different from 
those of some entomologists in Europe. 
Sweeping assertions are now-a-days always cavilled at; and, 
as my object is not to say things which excite cavil, the sweep- 
ing statement of fact which it is necessary to make shall be 
made in the language of an opponent. Baron von Harold thus 
characterizes the early literature of entomology : *—‘ The 
longer and more thoroughly that I oceupy myself with the sub- 
ject the more the conviction forces itself upon me that a good 
part of our nomenclature, in so far as it has reference to the 
literature of the end of the last and beginning of the present 
century, is nothing more than a protracted and fixed chaos of 
arbitrariness, inconsequences and blunders to the sifting and 
correct dealing which hardly had a beginning has been made.” 
It would be silly to enlarge on this, because it stands to 
reason. If the fact were not that the nomenclature of the end 
of the last century and the beginning of this century is a mass 
of blunders, an infinity of corrections, so-called, could not now 
be brought up. (I say “corrections so-called,” for I dispute 
that it is possible satisfactorily to elucidate at the present time 
the points which have led astray for this long period author 
after author; and which have done so because the questions 
are in truth obscure.) Well, but it is the literature which we 
are asked to do “justice” to that is “a chaos of arbitrariness, 
inconsequences and blunders,” for the misunderstander and 
the misunderstood make up together the band of “ first nomen- 
997 
clators’! Justice does not go by guess-work; but who is now 
* Coleopterologische Hefte, vi. p. 37. 
