52 Mr. F. O. P. Cambridge — A Revision 



but his courage seems occasionally to have failed him, 

 for he has not always applied those principles consistently 

 throughout. Curiously enough, too, he ignores his own 

 selections of types made in many cases in ' Les Arachnides 

 de France/ 



On page 799 of his Hist. Nat. Ar. ii. 1895^ he admits 

 that Latreille limited the genus Araneus {Aranea) to three 

 species, and also his right to do so by quoting Article 35 of 

 the International Congress of Zoology in 1889 (Paris) and 

 1892 (Moscow) to that effect; but he promptly selects as the 

 type of Araneus a species which was not included in this 

 limitation, namely anyulatus^ Clcrck. So, too, in the case 

 of the genus Lycosa, he takes as the type a species, tarentula, 

 Rossi, which was not originally included in the genus under 

 this or any other name. 



Simon, moreover, very rarely gives reasons for his selec- 

 tions of types; so that one is forced either to accept his 

 decisions as it were ex cathedra or to ignore them altogether. 

 But the days of the authority whose ipse dixit is final and 

 above question or criticism liave passed away ; and since the 

 work cannot be altogether ignored, tlie whole of the ground 

 must be reinvestigated to prove whether his selections are 

 sound or otherwise. 



These criticisms are offered in no way with a view of 

 underrating the splendid efforts of both Thorell and Simon 

 to introduce something like order into the chaos of nomen- 

 clature, but simply as a justification for this work of 

 revision. 



It must be made quite clear that, as with a group of 

 species, so with the name attached to that group and pub- 

 lished, no one, not even the original author himself, has a 

 right to make any alteration in it. It cannot matter, for 

 scientific purposes, whetlier a name be spelt, for instance, 

 Micromata or Micrommata, any more than it matters to 

 students in the future whether the spider usually known as 

 Anyjjhcena accentuata be known as Micromata accentuata, 

 as it must be, since it happens to be the type of the genus 

 Micromata. 



If an arbitrary method be followed, and every method 

 must be arbitrary at some point, at least let it be applied 

 consistently. Any other attempts, involving philosophical 

 considerations as to what this or tliat author would have 

 prelerred, simply open up further possibilities of confusion, 

 no two men agreeing as to how far this sympathy should be 

 extended, leading on to endless disputation over minor 

 details. Whereas if it be agreed to show no sympathy at 



