( xcvii ) 



result from ado])ting liis principle and applying it to the genera 

 of the older authors, ignoring all that has been done in the 

 meantime and treating the writings of our predecessors as so 

 many scraps of paper, condemns it at once as preposterous 

 and absurd. He had been looking up some others of the 

 genera, besides Tinea, in the 10th Edition of the " Systema 

 Naturae," to see what changes would follow if Sir George 

 Hampson's method were to be adopted. Ceramhyx, which 

 gives its name to a family of Longicorns, and is now applied 

 to a genus of well-known European species, w'ould be given 

 instead to the Harlec^uin-beetle, which is a native of tropical 

 America and belongs to another family. The name Leptura, 

 with L. aquatica as the type, woidd be transferred from the 

 flower-frequenting group of Longicorns known as the Lep- 

 turidae, and given instead to a group of sub-aquatic Phyto- 

 phaga. The glow-worm would lose the name of Lampyris 

 noctiluca, to be known henceforth as Canlharis noctiluca, with 

 a corresponding change in its family name. It would be 

 wrong in future to refer to the common house-fly as Musca 

 domeslica, or to place it in the family Muscidae ; the latter 

 name should be reserved for the Hover-flies, which we now 

 call Syyphidae. One had only to think for a moment what 

 hundreds of changes of this kind would involve, not merely 

 in systematic writings, but in literature of an economic 

 or more general character, in order to see how hopeless is the 

 prospect of getting a majority to adopt the method which 

 would bring them about. The number of genera whose 

 types cannot easily be determined in accordance with the rules 

 laid down in the International Code of Zoological Nomen- 

 clature was surely not so great that we nuist be prepared to 

 face the revolutionary alternative which Sir George Hamj^son 

 so persistently places before us, and to which he adheres in 

 his own writings in spite of the protests of almost every one 

 of his fellow-workers in entomology. It was to be hoped 

 that he would be led by the views expressed that evening to 

 reconsider his position, and that he would fall into line on the 

 subject of nomenclature with the systematists of his own and 

 of every other country. 



Mr. DuRRANT remarked that the present discussion really 



PROC. ENT, SOC. LOND., V. 1917 G 



