42 LIFE OF FLOWER 



convenience and general accord, and not abstract justice 

 or truth, there are cases in which the rigid law of 

 priority, even if it can be ascertained, requires qualifi- 

 cation, as it is certainly not advisable to revive an obsolete 

 or almost tfnknown name at the expense of one, which 

 if not strictly legitimate, has been universally accepted 

 and become thoroughly incorporated in zoological and 

 anatomical literature ; and it is often better to put up 

 with a small error or inconvenience in an existing name 

 than to incur the much larger confusion caused by the 

 introduction of a new one." 



These are weighty words of wisdom, and it must be 

 a matter for profound regret to all persons of thoroughly 

 philosophical and well-balanced minds that, by the newer 

 school of naturalists led by an American section they 

 have not only been received without the attention they 

 merit as coming from a man of Flower's wide experience 

 and mature judgment, but have been absolutely ignored 

 and the principle they inculcate treated with disdain and 

 contempt. Obscure names, frequently of the most 

 barbarous construction and sound, have been raked up 

 from all conceivable sources and substituted for the 

 well-known terms adopted by Flower and many of his 

 contemporaries ; while, to make matters worse, the 

 good old rule that no names antedating the twelfth 

 edition of the Sy sterna Nature of Linnaeus should 

 be recognised in zoological literature has, so far as 

 mammals are concerned, been treated absolutely as a 

 dead letter. 



If it be asked what has been the result of thus ignor- 

 ing the deliberately expressed and matured views of a 

 judicial mind like Flower's, and whether we are per- 



