Vol. xxiii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 275 
I am AGainsT the strict application of the rule of priority, because 
there seems to be no end to the changes arising under it. 
Take the birds of North America, some 700 species, if I remember 
rightly. The American Ornithologists’ Union has had a committee 
working on them for over thirty years, and every supplement to the 
original check list has an increasingly large number of changes of 
names, owing to the application of this law. In fact, the common 
names of the birds have been stable, and the scientific ones unstable. 
Now, if a committee of experts working for thirty years on the 
birds of one country only cannot reach stability, by the application 
of this rule, how can we ever reach it in larger groups for the whole 
world? 
I heartily agree with Mr. J. Chester Bradley’s letter in the May 
News. 
Furthermore, I think that where anyone proposes a change of name 
of any species, that change ought not to go into effect, until a 
year after the proposer of the change has published his reasons for 
thinking the change ought to be made. I have seen names changed 
in One publication and changed back again in the next issue. I have 
seen a name changed by the discovery of a new name for the species 
in an obscure publication, and the change upset by further research 
in the very same book. 
Lastly, I think a great many name changes, new species, sub-species 
and varieties are due at the bottom, simply to the unconscious van- 
ity of the author who desires to see his name in print as much as 
possible. Let us all guard against too much subconscious cerebration of 
this sort—C. S. Brim.ry. 
It MAy not be amiss to call attention to the fact that much con- 
fusion in the nomenclature of insects is not due to the law of priority, 
but to entomologists who do not follow that law, to entomologists who 
follow nomina conservanda, conserving and using names that they know 
to be synonyms when the majority of their colleagues are following 
priority. 
There is no way of enforcing any law in nomenclature. No prin- 
ciple of nomenclature ever had more support and authority back of it 
than the law of priority. Ever since 1842, every congress and code 
have stood by it; will nomina conservanda receive more support? 
No one more than the specialist dislikes to change names; the 
change of Conocephalus to Xiphidium will be of more annoyance to 
Mr. Caudell and a few other systematists in Orthoptera than to all 
the professors of Zoology in the country. But in recent years many 
systematists have realized the truth of the statement made seventy 
years ago by a committee of conservative English Zoologists, “The 
