422 ENUMEKATION OF ANIMALS. 



borrowed second-hand from a succession of popular writers, and 

 are hence old and obsolete. In which case it is only the accomplished 

 zoological specialist, versed in the superabundant literature of his 

 subject, who can correctly assign the proper modern designation or 

 synonymony. 



V. Moreover, we have constantly to encounter in popular works 

 on Natural History egregious mis-spellings by writers obviously 

 equally ignorant of Latin and Zoology including, for instance, an 

 utter disregard of any agreement as to gender between substantive 

 and adjective. A defective Latinity in book-writers, even of a 

 scientific class, is a fertile source of sometimes gross errors in 

 zoological nomenclature. 



VI. The incessant changes that are taking place in zoological 

 nomenclature and classification. This continuous and perplexing 

 changeability arises from or is connected with 



a. The prevalent love of novelty and fashion both in names, 

 in name-giving, and in systems of arrangement. 



b. The mania for elaborate species-making and splitting, and the 

 consequent multiplication of unnecessary names. 



c. The much greater attention given to the discrimination of 

 trivial differences than to the discovery of broad or general re- 

 semblances. 



d. The capricious conversion of varieties into species or vice 

 versa ; the finical sub- division of genera ; the transfer and re- transfer 

 of genera from one order into another. 



No doubt changes both in nomenclature and classification 

 maybe and are rendered necessary by the rapid acquisitions of zoology 

 by the numerous additions that are constantly being made from 

 all parts of the world to those ' new species ' in which zoological 

 systematists so greatly delight. But changes that are necessary and 

 desirable, that are the natural or legitimate fruit of accepted 

 additions to zoological knowledge, are to be carefully distinguished, 

 if it be possible to do so, from those that are neither necessary nor 

 desirable that are, in short, attributable to mere zoological dog- 

 matism, caprice, novelty or fashion. The convenient doctrine of 

 necessary change will not account for all the numerous instances in 

 which the name of some single common species of animal is in- 

 volved in a complex and puzzling synonymy, in which a single 

 well-known animal has become the unfortunate subject of two or 

 three dozen very different but equally curious Latinised designa- 

 tions. 



In endeavouring to determine the species of animal whose 

 habits arc described by such writers as those whose works are 



