40 CHARLES DARWIN. 



And again he wrote to Hugli Strickland, January 

 29th, 1849 :— 



" I have come to a fixed opinion that the plan of the first 

 describer's name, being appended for perpetuity to a species, 

 has been the greatest curse to Natural History. ... I feel sure 

 as long as species-mongers have their vanity tickled by seeing 

 their own names appended to a species, because they miserably 

 described it in two or three lines, we shall have the same vast 

 amount of bad work as at present, and which is enough to 

 dishearten any man who is willing to work out any branch 

 with care and time." 



And in another letter (February 4th) to the same 

 correspondent : — 



" In mineralogy I have myself found there is no rage to 

 merely name ; a person does not take up the subject without 

 he intends to work it out, as he knows that his only claim to 

 merit rests on his work being ably done, and has no relation 

 whatever to naming. ... I do not think more credit is due 

 to a man for defining a species, than to a carpenter for making 

 a box. But I am foolish and rabid against species-mongers, or 

 rather against their vanity ; it is useful and necessary work 

 which must be done ; but they act as if they had actually 

 made the species, and it was their own property." 



A little later in the same year (1849) his health 

 seems to have determined him to give up the crusade, 

 for he writes to Hooker (April 29th) : — 



" With health and vigour, I would not have shewn a white 

 feather, [and] with aid of half-a-dozen really good Naturalists, 

 I believe something might have been done against the 

 miserable and degrading passion of mere species naming." 



Anyone whose researches have been among the 

 species of any much-worked and much-collected 

 zoological group will quite agree that synonymy is, as . 



