10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 'J'J 



nale," and article 4a provides : " toute denomination generique ou 

 specifique conforme aux regies de la nomenclature binonutmle devra 

 etre adopte, meme si elle est anterieure a Linne." The zoologists, 

 however, at once realized the inadequacy of this " definition de la 

 nomenclature " well knowing (as did the paleontologists of course) 

 that there was no binominal nomenclature before Linnaeus. They 

 felt the incongruity of calling the system of Tournefort and of 

 Linnaeus, before the introduction of the univocal nomen trivialis, 

 binomiNal, and they consequently set about to rectify this clumsy 

 and ambiguous expression, and in the code submitted by them, the 

 first paragraph of article I took this form : " La nomenclature adoptee 

 pour les etres organises est binaire ET binominale." As a conse- 

 quence Art. lib which took the place of 4a, quoted above, came to 

 read as follows : " Le nom attribue a chaque Genre et a chaque 

 Espece ne peut etre autre que celui sous lequel ils ont ete le plus 

 anciennement designes, a la condition : que I'auteur ait effectivement 

 entendu appliquer les regies de la nomenclature binaire." Thus the 

 ludicrous reference of the paleontologists to a binominal nomen- 

 clature before Linnaeus was gotten rid of. 



We are here, for the first time in this chapter of the history of 

 zoological nomenclature, introduced to the term " nomenclature 

 binaire," which has since been translated into English as " binary 

 nomenclature," for the definition of which the English dictionaries 

 have been so inconsequently consulted ! While there is no explana- 

 tion of the terms in the accompanying " Rapports," probably for the 

 reason that the framers of the code of the Zoological Society of 

 France found it so obvious that no further definition seemed neces- 

 sary, there can, of course, be no doubt as to the meaning, viz., that 

 generic names by binarians, even if proposed before the general in- 

 troduction of the binominal nomenclature, should not be rejected, 

 a principle to which the French, both zoologists and paleontologists, 

 were positively committed. 



The Zoological Society of France did not rest with the adoption 

 of this code, but after having taken the initiative in calling the first 

 International Zoological Congress at Paris in 1889, a more detailed 

 code based on the principles of the one already adopted by the society 

 and employing the identical phraseology was introduced, accompanied 

 by a " Rapport " by Dr. R. Blanchard. These " Regies " were further 

 elaborated and commented on at the second meeting at Moscow, 1892, 

 when the first code of the International Zoological Congress, con- 

 sisting of 63 articles, was there adopted. The articles discussed above 

 have now (1892) the following phraseology: 



