19073 Zoological Co7igress at Boston 



respondence. Since its organization, the leading spirit 

 and permanent secretary has been Dr. Charles War- 

 dell Stiles of the United States Health Service, an 

 expert in Helminthology — the study of parasitic 

 worms. 



The Commission's special duty at Boston was to 

 complete and coordinate a new code of nomenclature. 

 To this end we considered all preceding codes and 

 rules, with particular regard to removing arbitrary 

 features. Concerning one matter of prime impor- 

 tance, however, there were among workers sharp 

 diversities of opinion which we were expected to har- 

 monize. 



For some years previous the zoologists of the world had been Problems 

 divided into what I may call three schools of taxonomy as to ofzodlogi- 

 the problem of assigning "logotypes" to the complex genera '^'^^ "ow^-n- 

 of early authors. From Linnaeus (1758) to Darwin (1858) ^^''^"''^ 

 naturalists regarded the genus simply as a sort of convenient 

 compartment into which species could be handily tucked away. 

 Animals or plants which looked alike were accordingly thrust 

 into the same genus without regard to fine points of structure 

 or derivation. After the publication of the "Origin of Species," 

 however, a totally new conception slowly crept in, and, almost 

 unconsciously, systematists began to conceive of a genus as a 

 branch of the tree of evolution. This change led to an enormous 

 increase in the number of recognized genera; and, to continue the 

 figure, a genus came to be thought of as comprising a group of 

 twigs clustered around a central one as "type." Next, for 

 convenience and accuracy, arose the agreement that a generic 

 name should forever go with its "genotype" — that is, the 

 species to which it was first applied. The problem then was to 

 adapt the work of pre-Darwinian authors to modern exigencies 

 by deciding on the type when an author has included incon- 

 gruous and divergent elements in the one genus. 



The three schools of opinion stood respectively for (a) the 

 "elimination rule," (b) the "first species rule," and (c) the "first 



c 245 :i 



