118 Dr. Th. Mortensen on the 



in their 'Notes Echinologiques , are trying to upset all that 

 has been done, basing their conclusions on the principles that 

 pre-Linnaean names should be accepted when binominal and 

 that the priority rules should be interpreted as strictly and 

 literally as possible against anything tending to make it 

 preferable to retain names in the old familiar meaning, and 

 that only the characters to be found also in the fossil forms 

 should be taken into account in classification. 



1 am not going to discuss here all the disputed names, 

 only remarking on a few of the more important, the main 

 object of these lines being to bring forward a definite proposal 

 which may, I hope, be a real step forwards along the way out of 

 the endless discussions and the exceedingly deplorable constant 

 rejection of names hitherto generally used, and the almost 

 criminal perversion of the old familiar names to quite a 

 different meaning — changes which can with comparative 

 facility be held in memory by the specialists, but which 

 cannot fail to be most unfortunate to all those who are not 

 especially acquainted with the group in question, and in 

 cases wheie the forms concerned are also of importance in 

 geology, as is in so high a degree the case with the Echinoids, 

 still more for palaeontologists and geologists. Indeed, to 

 quote {mutatis mutandis) from Mr. Frank Springer's address 

 concerning the name Encrinus : " The results will be hopeless 

 confusion, will benefit nobody, and cannot fail to bring 

 ridicule upon the taxonomic methods now in vogue." 



The name Cidaris has recently been very much discussed 

 by Bather, H. L. Clark, Doderlein, and myself, the result 

 being that all these authors agreed that the type of Linnseus's 

 Echinus cidaris is the species hitherto generally called Doro- 

 cidaris j^apillata, and that accordingly this species should be 

 named Cidaris cidaris (Linn.), JJorocidaris becoming a 

 synonym of Cidaris. Now Lambert and Thiery, in their 

 ' Notes Echinologiques : I. Sur le genre Cidaris *, maintain 

 that the Cidaris mauri of Rumphius ( = imperiaHs, Lamk.) 

 should be taken as the type of the genus Cidaris. 



Accepting for the moment that pre-Linnaean binominal 

 names should be adopted (and 1 agree there is some injustice 

 in taking Linnaeus, who ranks decidedly below some of his 

 predecessors as regards the Echinoids, as the starting-point, 

 and that it would be really more just to start from the first 

 binominal names, whether they be pre-Linneean or not), it 

 seems to me at least very doubtful whether Lambert and 

 Thiery are right. To identify the figure in Ruinphius's 



* Bull. Soc. Sci. Nat. Haute-Marne, 1909. 



