President's Address. 288 



than the trouble occasionally arising from the restoration of 

 old names, which ought in reality never to have been lost 

 sight of. 



But what is necessary to secure priority ? Not merely the 

 giving of a name to a specimen in a collection, nor even the 

 publication of such a name, unless there be also published a 

 description which is sufficiently intelligible and definite to 

 enable the specialist who is conversant with the particular 

 group to identify the form in question. Some would also 

 require a figure to be given, but I must demur to that being 

 an essential condition. No doubt a figure is a great aid to 

 certainty, but so in a much higher degree is the ocular 

 inspection of the type, which must often be resorted to when 

 even figures fail. But MS. names, and names published 

 without descriptions or figures, have no right to priority 

 whatever. Though it is indeed a graceful act for an author 

 to recognise and adopt MS. names when he has the 

 opportunity of describing the specimens to which they have 

 been applied, they cannot possibly stand in cases where 

 other names have been already given by authors independ- 

 ently, and published with descriptions.* 



The next question is —what constitutes publication ? And 

 here I fear that some confusion, or at least difference of 

 opinion, exists in the minds of many people. The rules of 

 the British Association demand that the description shall be 

 inserted in a printed book, and here I fully agree, with the 

 addition that the printed book ought also to be had for sale. 

 Many people hold that priority may date from the reading 

 of a paper at a scientific meeting, even though it might not 

 have been published for months afterwards. Well, that may 

 do very well as far as the general credit of scientific dis- 

 covery is concerned, but the priority of a name is not a 

 matter of credit, but of rule. Even as regards credit, the 

 thing is not satisfactory. Could we ensure that all scientific 



* This principle does not seem to have been understood, certainly not 

 accepted, by Mr J. W. Davis in writing his recent work on the fishes of the 

 Carboniferous Limestone, in which he insists on restoring, on the plea of 

 "priority," the mere MS. name Cladax,anthus iJaradoxus of Agassiz which had 

 been quite legally superseded by the name Erismacanthus Jonesii given by 

 M'Coy. 



