12 T. THORELL, 
wholesale doom of cassation would lead to much confusion both in zoologi- 
eal and botanical nomenclature.) i 
It is rightly observed by the British Committee, that a name once 
published is the property of the science, and cannot therefore be revoked 
or altered, not even by the person who has imposed it. Exceptions however 
exist, and we have already (pag. 10, 11) mentioned a couple: the Committee 
also admits, that there are names which ought unquestionably to be discarded, 
those namely, which in their signification are absurd or false. It would have 
been desirable that this sentence of reprobation had been extended also 
to certain classes of those names which the Committee only considers that 
naturalists ought in future to abstain from forming ("objectionable names”). 
Such are for instance mongrel names (compounded of two or more different 
languages) — e. g. Cirrhifera from xeeds and fero — and names manufactured 
by mutilating and mangling other names, e. g. Cypsnagra from Cypselus and 
JTanagra.?) To this class belong also the equally barbarous denominations 
that have arisen from the ridiculous practice of composing unmeaning generic 
names of arbitrarily combined letters, usually in the form of an anagram: 
e. g. Rocinela, Conilera, Cirolana, Anilocra, formed from the letters in Ca- 
rolina. We hope the time will come when also such names as those just 
mentioned will be rejected,*) though this is not yet the case. But certainly 
1) LINNÉ is even more severe than the British Committee in this matter: not 
only will he not permit the same generie names to be used in botany and zoology or 
mineralogy (Phil. bot., § 230), but he even adds: "nomina Generica cum Anatomico- 
rum, Pathologorum, Therapeuticorum, vel Artificum nomenclaturis communia omit- 
tenda sunt": ibid., 8 231. Fasricius lays down the same rule (Phil. entom., § 21, 
p. 108); but it would be vain now to attempt to get it applied. — Some modern authors 
have gone into the opposite extreme, and maintain that two or more genera of 
animals ought to be allowed to have the same name, if only they do not belong to the 
same Order. This assumption is in direct opposition to the hitherto universally re- 
ceived praxis in most branches of zoology. In araehnology e. g. the names Lycena, 
Hecaörge, Macaria have been discarded, because these generic names had been 
previously given to animals of another Class. 
2) Some other equally ill compounded names have very properly been discarded 
by more modern zoologists. Thus for example SUNDEVALL has rechristened the 
bird-genus Malherbipicus (from MALHERBE, the ornithologist, and picus) Pediopipo 
[Conspeetus Avium Picinarum p. 77 (1866)]; and Güntner [Catalogue of the Fishes 
in British Museum, Vol. V, p. 387 (1864)] has changed into Coccia the crazy name 
Ichthyococcus, given to a genus of fishes in honour of an Italian ichthyologist, and 
compounded of his name, Cocco, and éydwc! 
3) In confirmation of this view I beg to adduce the following citations: 
