CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE ADVANTAGES OF 

 USING GEOGRAPHICAL SYMBOLS. 



With a List of the Latinised Equivalents of those here Employed. 



I not only most willingly comply with the request of the Director to deal with this subject a 

 little more fully than I have done in the Introduction, but I am grateful to him for giving me 

 the opportunity. 



It must, of course, be at once admitted that names like those usually employed to indicate 

 species might have been used instead of geographical symbols. But the objections to names 

 seem to be many and serious. 



A " specific name," by long usage and almost universal agreement, implies a true genetic 

 group, and my experience has been that no explanation as to the meaning assigned to the use 

 of the name can change this. When we are not dealing with species but with forms, from the 

 ultimate grouping of which species may perhaps be discovered, the work is confusing if the 

 method of designation for the forms is that used for the species. Some special method is 

 needed for this preliminary analytical stage of the work. Only when the natural groups have 

 been discovered should names be used. 



The use of some special symbol for this preliminary study becomes obvious if we 

 picture to ourselves what must happen as soon as true genetic groups or species can be com- 

 pounded from series of known forms. One of the names will be retained as the name of 

 the species, others as the names of varieties, while the rest will have to be discarded as mere 

 synonyms. Working symbols have this advantage over ordinary specific names, that they can 

 be legitimately discarded if we so desire. But it seems to me that, while we would certainly 

 desire to discard a wearisome and perfectly unintelligible list of synonymous names, there 

 would be no desire to discard synonymies composed of geographical symbols, for they would 

 give at a glance the geographical distributions of the species and of its several varieties. 



The attempt here made to record forms is being made in other groups besides corals, but 

 so far only in such groups as have already been divided into species. The process involves 

 the addition to the accepted specific name of one or more qualifying names, one of which 

 invariably indicates the locality. In this way the old binominal designation of Linnaeus is 

 forming the basis for a multinominal system of recording the varying forms which we now find 



