ZO Allen, " Truth versus Error." - \\xt 



(p. 424), in commenting on the proposed new International Code 

 of Nomenclature, says : " It should surely be the object of an 

 International Code to interfere with individual liberty a-s. little as 

 possible, and to protect accepted names from any change that can 

 be avoided. But in correcting names which may be considered 

 to offend against grammar or philology, more inconvenience than 

 advantage is likely to arise. A longer name .... will often have 

 to be substituted for a shorter one. The practical nuisance of 

 this will be understood by those who have to write labels for small 

 bottles and glass slips. It is also contrary to the tendency of 

 language, which is constantly condensing instead of expanding 



forms By correction a name will sometimes secure a different 



initial, .... which is apt to be very confusing when an index has 

 to be consulted. The principle of priority is weakened when the 

 original form of a name is relinquished not in the interest of 

 science, but of scholarship. On the other hand, it is so easy to 

 let names alone, carrying with them their small but interesting 

 touches of autobiography, and no possible harm is done if we do 

 leave to the polished scholar some occasion for chuckling over us 

 untutored sons of science." 



I will conclude these extracts — which might be indefinitely 

 extended — by the testimony of a philologist, Mr. Walter Miller, 

 Professor of Classical Philology in the Leland Stanford Univer- 

 sity, who in a paper on ' Scientific Names of Latin and Greek 

 Derivation,' published recently in the Proceedings of the Cali- 

 fornia Academy of Sciences (3d Ser., I, No. 3, 1897, p. 143) says : 

 " We may recognize the law of priority as absolute, and retain the 

 many monstrous and misspelled names to be found on the records 

 of natural history, just as their makers left them. They are his- 

 toric facts and serve to mark the group of animals or plants to 

 which they apply, but these misshapen forms of words are not 

 ornamental and they are unworthy of scholars. It is to be hoped 

 that, in future, greater care maybe taken to make words that give 

 correctly the idea the author may have intended." 



This paper may fittingly close with the following extract from 

 the ' Introduction' (p. 12) to the A. O. U. Code : 



" Thus, in seeking to attain a basis of uniformity and stability, 

 it is always necessary to go back to the original forms of names, 



