50 REVIEWS. 



genera ; but from the new practice it will inevitably follow, 

 as Professor Agassiz asserts, that the proper establishment 

 and definition of genera which demand the highest powers 

 of the naturalist, will be less esteemed than the mere dis- 

 tinguishing of species ; a result which, far from promoting 

 science, will especially retard the progress of that part of 

 zoology in which there is most to be done, and in which the 

 science of the animal is still far behind that of the vegetable 

 kingdom. It is of the greatest importance that we should 

 be able to thread our way back through entangled synonymy 

 and mistaken references to the original sources. Here our 

 difficulties would be greatly multiplied, unless two sorts of 

 synonyms are used. For who, as Mr. Agassiz says, can find 

 out what Linnaeus has said of Jfuscicapa crinita, without a 

 direct reference to the genus in which Linnaeus himself placed 

 it ? And when, as often happens, the Linnaean species is 

 mistaken, so that the Tyrannus crinitus, Linn, (sp.) accord- 

 ing to Swainson, is not the T. crinitus, Linn. (s/>.) accord- 

 ing to some other author, the confusion becomes inextricable, 

 unless we encumber ourselves with two modes of annotation, 

 the old for expressing synonymy, and the new for the names 

 really adopted. " Then the two modes will not agree with 

 each other, nor can one know whither to turn himself. Surely 

 the authors of this new rule cannot have considered these 

 inconveniences, else they would have themselves discarded 

 it. Therefore I entreat and pray them, by all the interests 

 of the science they wish to promote, to abandon their proposi- 

 tion, and not to introduce a new schism into natural history, 

 but to return again to the system of Linnaeus, the most simple 

 of all, and the least likely to errors and Babylonish confusion 

 in nomenclature." 



The Committee of the American Association more wisely 

 adopted the mode, afterwards employed by Mr. Dana in 

 his great work on Zoophytes, namely, that of appending to 

 the specific name the original authority for the species in 

 brackets, and adding without brackets the name of the author 

 who first described the species under the later received 

 genus. To this plan there can be no objection, except that 



