412 Mr. Strickland’s Commentary 
* the inflexible law of priority.” There is reason to hope that 
naturalists are daily becoming more convinced of the value 
and excellence of this law. So long as authors adopt one 
name in preference to another merely on account of its supe- 
rior euphony of sound, or applicability of meaning, the no- 
menclatare of science must vary with the individual taste and 
opinion of each author. But when we adopt priority of pub- 
lication as our rule, we are guided not by opinion but by fact. 
The particular date at which any genus or species first re- 
ceives a name is an irrevocable matter of history ; and all na- 
turalists who adopt the first name that was given to the ob- 
ject, must coincide in their nomenclature. And although the 
jirst names that were given are not always the Jest, yet surely 
the establishment of an uniform and permanent language 
among naturalists of all nations is an object of far greater va- 
lue than the employment of names which, though more elegant 
and expressive, want the authority which time alone imparts, 
and vary with the tastes and caprices of men. The law of pri- 
ority has also the merit of being the only one which is just, 
as it preserves and honours the terms employed by original 
discoverers in preference to those introduced by later critics ; 
and it also has the advantage of reminding us of the date at 
which any species was discovered or group defined. In the 
application of this law Mr. Gray has acted with the strictest 
impartiality, though in one or two respects he seems to have 
somewhat departed from its spirit in adhering to its letter. 
In the first place I entirely agree with the Prince of Musi- 
gnano, that “in no case do I consider it right to take any of 
the names of the older authors in preference to those given by 
Linneus. We owe this compliment to that great man; and 
besides it is not fair to assume that our Binomial system of 
nomenclature was established before his time, because we 
meet with a few instances capable of being referred to the in- 
valuable principle which he was the first to generalize and 
render universal.” With regard to specific names then, we 
cannot carry back the law of priority beyond the date of the 
12th edition of the ‘Systema Nature,’ and we ought not to 
set aside the earliest specific name given to a species after 
that date in favour of one accidentally binomial in form which 
was given defore it. ‘Thus, for instance, the Hirundo chalybea 
of Gmelin was termed by Brisson H. cayanensis ; but we do 
not adopt the latter name, because Brisson had evidently no 
idea of a regular binomial nomenclature like that of Linnzeus, 
and generally employed a sentence instead of a word to desig- 
nate a species. 
The same principle applies to the priority of generic names 
