Presidents Address. 279 



of kinds of animals, and the necessity of recognising them, 

 may exclaim, Well — but would not Piked Dogfish and 

 Spotted Dogfish serve the purpose equally well, and besides 

 be more appropriate terms for the use of our people than 

 such repellant names as Acanthias vulgaris and Scylliiini 

 canicula? "What's in a name?" it might be said; and "Is 

 it not better to use names understood by the people ? " 



Here we must remind our friends that even among people 

 who speak the same language, the ordinary names of com- 

 mon animals and plants vary in different places in a most 

 astonishing degree. The fish called Dogfish in America 

 belongs to a totally different order from our Dogfishes. A 

 crustacean, the J^orway Lobster {Nephrons Norvegicus), 

 quite different from either the crayfish or the prawn of Eng- 

 land, is nevertheless called " crayfish " in Edinburgh and 

 " prawn" in Dublin. We may also initiate our friends further 

 into the subject by informing them that it really is necessary 

 for naturalists living in different countries to know what 

 each other are doing, and that for any working scientist 

 to attempt to learn or to understand the native names of 

 animals and plants in all parts of the globe, even where 

 they have received such, is an inconceivable absurdity, 

 and finally that the researches of naturalists have made 

 known the existence of thousands and thousands of creatures 

 which had not received any vernacular name in any 

 language. And the system of employing for scientific pur- 

 poses names, Latin in form and also mostly derived from the 

 classical languages, which originated in the old custom of 

 writing scientific and other learned works in Latin, is now 

 perpetuated for the purpose of ensuring accuracy and pre- 

 cision, qualities often not appreciated as they should be by 

 those whose work lies outside the pale of science. All con- 

 troversy as to Biological nomenclature must therefore hinge 

 round the question of accuracy, in fact, we must know what 

 we are about when we name or catalogue species, or read 

 the descriptions and catalogues of others. 



The names employed by the older naturalists frequently 

 consisted of an entire string of Latin words, such for example 

 as " Ehombus maximus asper non squamosus," by which we 



