184 Mr. D. Sharp on some proposed 



to the standard of a cause now, thanks perhaps to their 

 tenacity, victorious. I must specially mention Marsham ; 

 his preface to ' Entomologica Britannica ' is but a lengthy 

 plea for Linnaeus against Fabricius, the arch-muddler, 



as he has been justly styled And we also, the 



entomologists of 1886, partisans by conviction of the 

 law of priority, we are going to restore, wherever we 

 can, the ancient names, as commanded by reason and 

 the laws of our science." 



Our talented French contemporary, it must be ad- 

 mitted, expresses himself frankly and well. But if we 

 examine the changes he introduces us to by these words 

 we shall see at once that they are themselves a con- 

 vention, based on an assumption and carried out by a 

 fictitious artifice: the convention is "Priority"; the 

 assumption is that priority can and should be applied to 

 generic names, and the artifice is the treating a species 

 artificially selected from a genus as if it were the genus 

 itself. 



This system of transfers is, in fact, suggested by 

 theory, and, while the practical objections to the transfers 

 are so evident that no attempt to disguise them is made 

 even by des Gozis himself, who frankly tells us he is 

 taking us into chaos, a very little consideration is 

 sufficient to make it clear that the system is theoretically 

 as unsound as it is admitted to be objectionable in 

 practice. 



It is based on "Priority." Granted that "Priority" 

 is a good thing as regards trivial or specific names, it 

 still remains to be shown that it is a good thing in the 

 case of generic names. I have myself twelve or fifteen 

 years ago argued strongly for " Priority " in trivial 

 names, and pointed out that it is inapplicable in the 

 case of generic names, because genera themselves are 

 constantly fluctuating . The application of generic names 

 changes naturally whenever a genus is altered or divided, 

 and it is at that moment of transition that the new appli- 

 cation of a name formerly apidied to the whole should 

 be decided. This is practically the course ado^Hed by 

 naturalists, and it is clearly the only reasonable one. 

 In 'Nature' (vol. ix., p. 260), A.K.Wallace has laid 

 down the following principles : — " 1. To adopt absolutely 

 and without exception the principle of priority as regards 

 specific or trivial names. 2. To adopt the same 



