32 CODE OF NOMENCLATURE. 



it in their power first formally to enunciate the principles of the new method, 

 the practicability of which they have already demonstrated to their fellow 

 workers in Zoology. 



4. Of the Beginning of Zoological Nomenclature proper, and of 

 the Operation of tJie Law of Priority. 



CANON XII. The Law of Priority begins to be operative at 

 the beginning of zoological nomenclature. 



REMARK. This Canon will be disputed by no one who observes the 

 law of priority as a 'fundamental ' maxim. The date to be assigned is quite 

 another matter, on which great difference of opinion prevails. 



CANON XIII. Zoological nomenclature begins at 1758, the 

 date of the Xth edition of the ' Systema Naturae' of Linnaeus. 



REMARKS. With regard to this Canon, the utmost diversity of opinion 

 has prevailed among botanists as well as zoologists, and the Committee de- 

 sires it to be subjected to searching criticism. It will first offer a brief 

 historical resumt, mainly derived from Dall (Rep*, pp. 41-44) and other 

 sources, covering the ground of Botany as well as Zoology. 



Nomenclatural rules, foreshadowed by Linnaeus in his ' Fundamenta En- 

 tomologica,' 1736, were first definitively proposed in the ' Philosophia Bo- 

 tanica,' 1751. These rules, however, related almost exclusively to the generic 

 name. In 1745 he first employed for a few plants a specific name (iioinen 

 triviale), consisting of one word, in contradistinction from the polynomial 

 description which had been as a rule the nomen specificitm of naturalists. 

 That which now seems the most happy and important of the Linnasan 

 ideas, the restriction of the specific name as now understood, appears to 

 have long been only a secondary matter with him, as he hardly mentions 

 the nomen triviale in his works up to 1765. In 1753, in the ' Incrementa 

 Botanices,' while dwelling upon his own reforms, he does not allude to bino- 

 mial nomenclature. In the 'Systema Naturae,' ed. x., 1758, the binomial 

 system is for the first time consistently applied to all classes of organisms 

 (though he had partially adopted it in 1745) ; whence many naturalists have 

 regarded the tenth edition as the most natural starting-point. The system 

 being of slow and intermittent growth, even with its originator, an arbitrary 

 starting-point seems necessary. In the twelfth edition, 1766-68, numerous 

 changes and reforms are instituted, and a number of his earlier names are 

 arbitrarily changed. In fact, Linnaeus never seems to have regarded specific 

 names as subject to his rules. 



It must be noted that an apparent rather than a real distinction has been 



