XII 

 THE RULES OF NOMENCLATURE 



THE subject of the nomenclature, or naming of fossils, is 

 one productive of much irritation and of many sarcastic 

 utterances among geologists, to whom the time spent by 

 many palaeontologists on the accurate determination of 

 the names of fossils appears as sheer waste. The 

 attitude of mind of many critics of these palaeontologists 

 is expressed by a rather hackneyed quotation from 

 Shakespeare, of which it is sufficient to say that if Juliet 

 had ordered a rose from her gardener by the name of 

 garlic, the rose would not have smelled as sweet as she 

 desired. The whole purpose of giving names to things 

 is that persons may be able to speak to one another 

 about them without danger of misunderstanding. 



In proportion as we wish to discriminate more and 

 more minutely between things, we require more and 

 more exact names for them. There are purposes for 

 which roses and lilies and buttercups may be spoken of 

 without discrimination as "flowers"; there are others 

 for which they require distinct names ; there are yet 

 others for which the need is felt of finer discrimination, 

 by means of qualifying adjectives as " red rose " and 

 " white rose " ; while a modern gardener requires 

 separate names for a great number of different kinds in 

 each of these categories. 



The naming of fossils is only a part of the naming of 

 animals and plants in general. Leaving plants aside 



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