1849.] NOMENCLATURE. 367 



man knew that the memory of his own name depended on his 

 doing his work well, and not upon merely appending a name 

 with a few wretched lines indicating only a few prominent 

 external characters. But I will not weary you with any 

 longer tirade. Read my paper or not, just as you like, and 

 return it whenever you please. 



Yours most sincerely, 



C. DARWIN. 



Hiigh Strickland to C. Darwin. 



The Lodge, Tewkesbury, Jan. 3ist, 1849. 



.... I have next to notice your second objection that 

 retaining the name of the first describer in perpetuum along 

 with that of the species, is a premium on hasty and careless 

 work. This is quite a different question from that of the law 

 of priority itself, and it never occurred to me before, though it 

 seems highly probable that the general recognition of that law 

 may produce such a result. We must try to counteract this 

 evil in some other way. 



The object of appending the name of a man to the name of 

 a species is not to gratify the vanity of the man, but to indi- 

 cate more precisely the species. Sometimes two men will, by 

 accident, give the same name (independently) to two species of 

 the same genus. More frequently a later author will misapply 

 the specific name of an older one. Thus the Helix putris of 

 Montagu is not H. putris of Linnaeus, though Montagu sup- 

 posed it to be so. In such a case we cannot define the species 

 by Helix putris alone, but must append the name of the 

 author whom we quote. But when a species has never borne 

 but one name (as Corvus frugilegus], and no other species of 

 Corvus has borne the same name, it is, of course, unnecessary 

 to add the author's name. Yet even here I like the form 

 Corvus frugilegus, Linn. y as it reminds us that this is one of 

 the old species, long known, and to be found in the ' Systema 



