IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 101 



be left to woods as to their appropriate crop. The loess clay 

 will never enable its cultivator to compete with his more 

 fortunate fellow-citizen who farms the drift, and the sooner 

 the people of Iowa find it out the better. (2) It is likely that 

 orchards and vineyards will thrive better on the loess than on 

 the drift, as trees generally may be supposed to have been sub- 

 ject to similar discipline in all time and in all parts of the 

 world. 



THE NOMENCLATURE QUESTION AMONG THE SLIME- 

 MOULDS. 



BY T. H. MACBRIDE. 



That a man's difficulties are often of his own creating is a 

 fact patent in science as in other fields. The imperfections of 

 our methods form ever increasing nets of complexity about the 

 feet of our progress. No one feels this more keenly than the 

 naturalist, especially he who would attempt to give more 

 exact account of some limited group or series of animals or 

 plants. No matter how carefully he may arrange his materi- 

 als, no matter how industriously he may have worked out the 

 various problems of structure and morphology, there comes at 

 last to plague him, to hinder him, to mar his purpose and 

 waste his time, the question of nomenclature; his specimens 

 must be named. This ceremony, the christening, which ought 

 to have been the simplest matter in the world, has really 

 become, if not the most difficult, at least the most annoying 

 and thankless portion of his task. Preposterous also as it may 

 seem, it is precisely the oldest and most universally recognized 

 of the forms with which he deals that are apt to give the most 

 trouble. There has arisen a class of critics among us who 

 have devoted their energies to the unsettling of scientific 

 nomenclature in every department of research, with the result 

 that, rightly or wrongly, every systematic work in the world 

 needs revision if not re- writing, and every herbarium in the 

 world needs a new set of labels. Now, this might all not be so 

 bad if such a revolution were final. If the wheel were only 

 weighted on one side, so that oncj it came to rest we could feel 



