■i06 Dihliogrnphical Notices. 



As regards the question of nomenclature, the author's views are 

 not in all cases quite easy to understand, and his mode of procedure 

 does not seem always uniform. Apparently he follows priority of 

 date to the bitter end, as we find the little-known Alouata replacing 

 the familiar Mycetes, and Ci/nocepJialus giving way to Papio. But if 

 priority is to cause the replacement of familiar names by others 

 which have for years reposed in more or less deep obscurity, surely 

 the preoccupation of titles is a much more serious bar to their 

 employment. And yet in the Pteropida^, or Pteropodidae as we 

 prefer to call them, we find the names Megaloglossus and Macro- 

 gloastis retained, although they have been shown to be preoccupied 

 and other names have been proposed in their place. On the other 

 hand, AnihropopWiecus replaces Troglodytes^ on account of the 

 preoccupation of the latter. 



We presume the reason why Mcyaloglossus and Macroglossus are 

 retained is because the preoccupying names have not precisely 

 the same terminations — that is to say, because they end in -glossa 

 or -glossum instead of -glossits. And this leads to the question 

 whether a slight difference in the spelling of what is really 

 the same word — either purposely or through ignorance — admits 

 of its being used for two different genera : that is to say, 

 whether we may have Mastodon and Mastudus, or Megatherium and 

 Megahtherium. Until quite recently it was answered in the 

 negative ; but a school has been started which maintains that a 

 name is always to be spelt precisely as written by the proposer, 

 whether correct or not : and that if an author spells a name properly 

 and assigns it to one genus, a second may spell it incorrectly and 

 thus keep it for another. This is virtually a confirmation of the 

 views of a certain West-Indian gentleman in one of Marryat's novels, 

 who said that as individuals have peculiar styles of handwriting, 

 there is no reason why they should not display idiosyncracies of 

 s])elling. In other words, it is the glorification of ignorance against 

 education and culture. And we have heard it urged that as classical 

 knowledge is likely to decrease, we cannot any more insist on classical 

 accuracy in our scientific nomenclature. Our own opinion is very 

 decided on the question ; but it is quite time that naturalists in 

 general should make up their minds once for all how the question 

 is to be settled. And it is not the slightest use two or three saying 

 that they will adopt such and such a plan without full consultation 

 with all their fellow-workers. 



What may be Dr. Trouessart's views on the question of amending 

 orthography, it is quite impossible to determine. For instance, on 

 page 137 we find the amended Machcurodus standing for Kaup's 

 original Macliairodus, while on page 248 the incorrect Ailwus 

 remains in place of the amended yElurus. Possibly the question is 

 one of not much moment one way or the other ; but when it is a 

 question of adopting the amended form or maintaining the original, 

 it may be supposed that all will agree in advocating a uniformity 

 of practice. Classically there is no doubt that if we use Latin 



