2 CODE OF NOMENCLATURE. 



and its efficiency in meeting all necessary and reasonable re- 

 qiiiremento of a system of classification, — in a word, upon its 

 practical convenience. 



Fortunately for the interests of science, the tendency of natu- 

 ralists has latterly been toward substantial agreement upon most 

 of the fundamental principles involved in nomenclature, vari- 

 ance of opinion coming mainly in the application of those prin- 

 ciples in minor details. To prepare an acceptable and entirely 

 available code of rules, the compilers of to-day have therefore to 

 do little more than clearly formulate the current usages of the 

 best naturalists, and consistently apply them to any given case. 



Without undertaking to give in detail the history of zoologi- 

 cal and botanical nomenclature from the Linna^an period to the 

 present day, the Committee deems it proper and needful to 

 advert to certain moot points. While binomial nomenclature 

 may be considered to have originated with Linnaeus, who pro- 

 pounded and established its fundamental principles with admi- 

 rable sagacity, these have in the course of time and to some 

 extent been necessarily modified to meet the requirements of 

 the progress of zoological science, by restriction in some direc- 

 tions and extension in others. So radically, indeed, has the 

 aspect of the science changed since the Linncean period, and so 

 profoundly do modern conceptions in biological science differ 

 from those then held, that a strict binomial system has probably 

 had its day, and may be abandoned, with great benefit to sci- 

 ence, in the not distant future. But, assuming that the binomial 

 nomenclature, with some modification, is still to be retained for 

 a while, in its general features, the whole course of scientific 

 nomenclature has shown that the law of priority — lex priorita- 

 tis — is the one great underlying principle ; and the nearly uni- 

 versal tendency is, to hold this principle inviolate, to adhere to 

 it with the utmost possible stringency, and to tolerate the fewer 

 infractions as time advances.^ But there is unfortunately no 



1 A signal exception to this is found in the just published ' History of British 

 Birds,' by Mr. Henry Seebohm, — an ingenious and thoughtful ornithologist, — who 

 discards the lex prioritatis, substituting therefor an audorum plurimorum principle, 

 according to which his method is to use for every bird that specific name which has 



