( viii ) 



attempt of oue entomologist by this means to confer honour (often un- 

 deserved) upon another may be excused, what can be said for the man who 

 is not content to wait till the compliment is paid him by another, but 

 insists upon crowning himself? The President believed the case to be 

 without precedent, and, as it was certainly a departure from good taste, 

 he trusted Mr. Spiller would not find an imitator. 



Whilst on the subject of paronymic nomenclature, the President desired 

 to enter a protest against such grotesque barbarisms as Huxelhydrus, 

 Tyndallliydrus, Darwinhydrus, and Spencerhydrus, which met his eye on 

 perusing the pages of the 'Zoological Record' for 188'2. Those mon- 

 strosities are due to Dr. David Sharp, and are published in the Scientific 

 Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society. It might be doubtful which 

 was the most to be pitied, the poor water-beetles, or the eminent men 

 whose names Dr. Sharp had thus profaned. If done in ignorance it might 

 have been passed over in silence; but in Dr. Sharp's case it could only 

 be that he has sinned from eccentricity prepense. Such hideous and 

 unmeaning forms only tend to bring scientific nomenclature into contempt. 

 It was puzzling to imagine how any educated man (vel doctus, vel doctor) 

 could deliberately write, much less print, such names ; and still more, how 

 any scientific Society could allow them to appear in their Transactions. 



Mr. R. M'Lachlan said that the Dublin Society had no choice in the 

 matter, as the names in question were published in the ' Comptes rendus 

 de la Soc. Ent. de Belgique ' for 1880. See also Ent. Mo. Mag., xvii., 187, 

 where it is suggested that " the most egregious of the horrors " were brought 

 forward merely to show Dr. Sharp's contempt for nomenclators. 



Mr. H. J. Elwes protested against the custom adopted by Mr. Moore 

 and others of using Hindoo mythological names ; they were more difficult 

 to remember than any other names he had met with. 



Mr. F. P. Pascoe remarked that there was the difficulty of spelling as 

 well as of remembering any barbarous names ; we were accustomed to 

 names with a Greek or Latin derivation, and he thought that no others 

 should be used. 



Mr. R. M'Lachlan thought that we should not argue too much from 

 our own insular predilections ; what we should often consider a barbarous 

 name would be quite familiar to a Russian, and vice versa. 



Prof. Westwood recommended a study of the principles laid down in 

 Linne's * Philosophia Botauica' and in Fabricius' ' Philosophia Entomo- 

 logica' to all nomenclators. He thought a Hindoo god as worthy of having 

 an insect named after it as any of the Greek or Roman gods or goddesses. 



Papers read. 

 Mr. E. Saunders read the concluding part of his " Synopsis of the 

 British Hymenoplera Aculeata — Part Hi. Apid(£.'' Also " Further Notes 

 on the terminal segments of Aculeate Hymenoptera." 



