Ixlx 



Intimately connected with this subject is the question of deep- 

 sea dredging, to which so much attention has been directed during 

 the last few years ; and entomologists cannot but expect a rich 

 harvest of novelties from the researches of the naturalists employed 

 in the exploring vessel (the ' Challenger ') which has but lately 

 left our shores for a three-years' scientific cruise, the Articulata 

 being under the charge of Mr. Moseley, one of the most successful 

 of our Oxford students. The East India Government, in the early 

 part of the past year, sent out a vessel for a three-months' voyage 

 Avith the like object in the Eastern Seas, but I have not yet heard 

 with what results. 



Nomenclature. 



The unfruitful subject of Nomenclature has formed the material 

 of several of our evening discussions, and has occupied the atten- 

 tion of several writers in the 'Entomologist's Monthly Magazine.'* 

 Mr. W. A. Lewis t has especially done good service by exposing 

 the endless evils which are being produced in our Systematic 

 Catalogues by the rejection of long-established and universally 

 adopted names in favour of previous but long-neglected or entirely 

 overlooked ones. The legal maxim, " Communis error facit jus," 

 has been happily advanced by Mr. Lewis against such absolute 

 applications of the law of priority, and I have not hesitated, in an 

 article on the subject published in the 'Academy,' I to insist that 

 the legal principle, of twenty years' possession of an estate, forming 

 a bar to all previous claimants, might with equal propriety be 

 adopted in zoological nomenclature. I fear, however, that the 

 intemperate style of Mr. Lewis's writings will have the effect of 

 alienating many of those persons who would not hesitate to adopt 

 the principle of ignoring such long-forgotten names which may 

 have been or shall be brought forward with the view of super- 

 seding those in universal employment (see Trans. Ent. Soc. 1872, 

 p. xxix.), especially as Mr. Lewis has rashly thought proper to 

 attack, in what appears to me to be an unfounded manner, one of 

 the ablest, as he is at the same time one of the most con- 

 scientious of living entomologists, and one who this Society has 



* Troc. Ent. Soc. 1872, p. xxix., xxxiv. Entom. Mo. Mag., vol. viii., 253, 254, 

 270, 291. 



+ 'A Discussion on the Law of Priority in Entomological Nomenclature,' &c. 

 London, 8vo, 1872. 



+ No. 47, May 1, 1872, No. 169. 



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