A.2S Correspondence. I q"^ 



responsibility rests with him. With published nomina nuda such is the 

 nearly uniform practice, from which there is little if any departure. If, 

 on the contrary, a nomen nudum has never been published, if it exists 

 only on a collector's field label, if it has never seen the light except 

 through the alcohol of a museum jar, if it lies buried in some posthumous 

 or half forgotten manuscript, if it has been suggested verbally only, and 

 an author adopts it and defines it, and publishes it, then individual opinion 

 begins to run riot. Instead of agreeing that an unpublished nomen 

 nudum should be treated exactly like a published one, many writers con- 

 sider that it has special prerogatives, and that its existence, to a certain 

 degree at least, precludes the free subsequent use of the term. In other 

 words, the writer who adopts a manuscript name is not universally con- 

 ceeded to be authority for the printed nomenclatural unit, although he 

 alone is responsible for its publication, and in nine cases out of ten the 

 paper in which it is printed will appear in indexes and bibliographies 

 under his name only.' To some writers it seems proper that the respon- 

 sibility for a manuscript name when published should be equally shared 

 by the publisher and the writer of the label, arranger of museum speci- 

 mens, or writer of the laid aside manuscript. Others, and among them 

 the majority of botanists, ignore the publisher. Comparatively few show 

 their regard for consistency by a uniform treatment of all nomina nuda, 

 whether published or not. 



This confusing lack of uniformity probably arises from two principal 

 causes, — first, that the writers of manuscript names are often our personal 

 friends, while the publishers of nomina nuda are most of them dead, and 

 second, that it is difficult to keep clearly and constantly in mind that 

 nomenclature deals not -vtth history, not ivith botany, not -with zoology, but 

 ivith names, and that therefore the authority for a name has nothing what- 

 ever to do with the authority for a species. With regard to the first of 

 these disturbing causes, if such it really be, nothing need be said. The 

 second, however, which is undoubtedly by far the more potent, demands 

 careful consideration, as it strikes at the root of the whole question of the 

 citation of authority. 



Unless we admit, as I fear few of us are honest enough to do, that the 

 principal object in writing the name of an author after a nomenclatural 

 compound is to tickle worldly vanity, we must, to defend this custom, show 

 that it is of some advantage to systematic zoology or botany as a whole. 



' A peculiarly apt example is furnished by a recent paper in the ' Proceedings ' 

 of the U. S. National Museum (Vol. XIX No. 1115). Here twenty-two new 

 fish are described, " each in the name of the person responsible for the determi- 

 nation and description." Among this small number of species no less than 

 eleven authorities are quoted in addition to the one which appears at the head 

 of the article (this stands for only three ! ), and which — so I am informed by a 

 member of the Publication Committee — will alone, according to current 

 usage, be found in the index to the volume. 



