28o . APPENDIX A. 



23). In the original draft; no edition of Linnaeus was selected 

 (Strickland having left a blank space for the insertion of the 

 edition to be adopted), the 12th edition was inserted by the Man- 

 chester Committee in 1842 (vide Sclater, p. 24). 'This was done 

 not as being the first in which the binomial nomenclature had been 

 used as it commenced with the loth, but as being the last and 

 most complete of Linnaeus's works and containing many species 

 the loth did not' 



The committee having admitted that the binomial nomenclature 

 originated with Linnaeus in the loth edition 1758, and having laid 

 down the principle of priority from tJie inception of the binomial 

 nomenclature, illogically stultify § i and § 2 by adopting the 12th 

 edition 1766 — 8. In this they can not be followed, their action 

 was inconsistent with the principles they advocated." 



3. KiRBY (W. F.). 



" I hold that the loth edition of Linnaeus should be accepted, 

 for the following reasons : 



{a) The binomial nomenclature was fully established in it. 



{b) The binomial nomenclature was accepted and employed by 

 many eminent writers between 1758 and 1767. 



{c) The 1 2th edition was not a new work, and made no new 

 departure. It is only a revised and enlarged edition of the loth. 



{d^ Linnaeus' own species, described in the 12th edition, 

 cannot be properly elucidated without reference to works of his 

 own, and of other writers, published between 1758 and 1767. [The 

 date of the 2nd part of Vol. I. of the 12th edition, which contains 

 the Insects, is 1767 ; 1766 is the date of the ist part containing 

 Vertebrates.] 



{e) The number of alterations in nomenclature necessitated 

 by going back to 1758 will not be so great as to produce serious 

 inconvenience." 



4. Meyrick (E.). 



"Doubtless the loth edition has the best logical claims, for the 

 reasons stated by Mr Kirby*. But as the 12th is, both in form and 

 fact, adopted by other Zoologists, I should object to Lepidopterists 

 upsetting a long-established practice without a general consensus 

 of other naturalists. The adoption of the 1 2th was a convention ; 

 but the adoption of the loth would also be a convention only ; the 

 law of priority is likewise merely a convention. When conventions 

 of such wide effect have been long and generally accepted, I hold 

 that it would be pedantic and unpractical to upset them on abstract 

 grounds." 



[*Reply 3. Meyrick, 18 July 1897, agrees to the adoption of the 

 loth edition, vide Reply 12. Durrant^ 



