NO. I HISTORY OF ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE STEJNEGER 3 



Compare this with the tenth edition, 1758, pp. 189-190, where we 

 have the following : 



100. Parus. Rostrum integerrimum. 



Lingua truncata, setis terminata. 



The accepted " binominal " names of the above six species are 

 enumerated as follows : 



1. Cri status. 



2. Major. 



4. Caeruleus. 



5. Ater. 



6. Palustris. 



7. Caudatus. 



Surely here is no difference ; nor is it likely that anybody may 

 argue that this binominalism is incidental or accidental. 



While thus 1758 does not in itself mark a sudden revelation in 

 zoological nomenclature, this year, after the long and painful experi- 

 mentation by the zoologists with another year (1766), has come out 

 victorious as a starting jioint chiefly on account of practical con- 

 siderations. 



The fact is that w^hile Linnaeus was a master methodologist and 

 a great systematic naturalist, there were among his contemporaries 

 men who in their more limited fields possessed a wider and deeper 

 insight than Linnaeus himself. They were so closely synchronous 

 with him that he could not benefit by their work and they had hardly 

 time, if they had the inclination, to adapt their own writing to his. 

 Nevertheless, their influence upon their special branches has been 

 so profound, that their successors a hundred years after have insisted 

 on preserving at least so much of the zoological nomenclature origi- 

 nating with them as could be reconciled with, or rather as coincided 

 with, that of the great Swede. By selecting 1758 as a starting point, 

 it became possible to recognize all mononominal generic names origi- 

 nating after that date, although the species designations might be 

 inapplicable. 



It has been asserted repeatedly that by admitting the genera of 

 binarists, who after 1758 were not also binominalists, we are guilty of 

 inconsistency by recognizing authors who were not " playing the 

 Linnaean game." But, when did Linnaeus himself begin to play the 

 game? Surely not in 1758. He began it in 1735 with the " Systema 

 Naturae sive regna tria naturae systematice proposita per classes, 

 ordines, genera, & species " as the title page has it, and as it was re- 

 peated with slight verbal changes in each of the following editions 

 {2^, 6*^ and lo*'^) brought out by Linnaeus himself. Gradually the 



