8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 'J'J 



fort en 1694; dans la zoologie ils commencent proprement avec la 

 premiere edition du Sy sterna Naturae de Linne, de 1735, qni est le 

 premier ouvrage ou les genres font partie essentielle du systeme dans 

 la zoologie, et ils y sont exposee a travers tout le regne animal." This 

 principle, which was none other than that first introduced by the 

 equally eminent English ornithologist, G. R. Gray, in the second edi- 

 tion of his Genera of Birds (1841), the year before the issue of the 

 B. A. Code, namely, one starting point for the names of genera and 

 another for those of species, was rather universally accepted by those 

 who clamored for a revision of the Stricklandian Code. But even 

 among those who favored starting the binominal nomenclature from 

 1766, the principle was recognized that the status of an author's 

 generic names is not influenced by his adherence to the mononomial 

 (univocal) species designation, as shown by the following quotation 

 from an article by Alfred. Newton, one of the stanchest defenders 

 of the binominal system and a member of the revision committee: 

 " His [Brisson's] genera are brought in [into the revised Strick- 

 landian Code of 1865] by a special enactment; but once admitted, 

 they are exactly on the same footing, to stand or fall, as those of any- 

 body else. His specific names, we know, are rejected, but that is 

 simply because he did not adhere to the binomial system of nomen- 

 clature which we adopt, and very rightly they are rejected. Had his 

 book been published a few years later, or had the [B. A.] Code 

 enacted that the loth edition of the ' Systema ' should be the point 

 of departure, there would have been no need to treat him exception- 

 ally as regards his genera." (Ibis (3), vol. 6, 1876, p. 103.) 



In France the whole question was reopened in 1879 curiously 

 enough not by the zoologists but by the First International Geological 

 Congress in Paris. A Committee was appointed to formulate " Regies 

 a suivre pour etablir la nomenclature des especes." The members of 

 the paleontological section residing in Paris (Cotteau, Douville, 

 Gaudoy, Gosselet, Pomel, and de Saporta) consequently submitted 

 to the second International Geological Congress in Boulogne, 1881, 

 a uniform code for zoology and botany, " prenant pour point de de- 

 part le code Strickland," under the title " Regies proposees par le 

 Comite de la Nomenclature paleontologique " (Congres Geologique 

 International, Compte Rendu de la 2^^ Session, Boulogne, 1881, 

 PP- S94"595)' consisting of only 11 brief articles, but accompanied 

 by a " Rapport " by Douville. The principle accepted is clearly ex- 

 pressed in article i, which reads as follows: "La nomenclature ex- 

 clusivement adoptee est la nomenclature binominale, dans laquelle 

 chaque individu est designe par un nom de genre et par un nom d'es- 



