PKINCIl'LES, CANONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 29 



§ 2. Of the Binomial System as a Phase of Zoological 



Nomenclature. 



Few naturalists, whctlicr botanists or zoologists, appear to have consid- 

 ereil the binomial system of naming objects as aiight else than the perma- 

 nent heritage of science, the entire superstructure of which should be built 

 with the binomial nomenclature as the corner-stone, and the wiiole language 

 of which should conform to the requirements of an inflexible binomial sys- 

 tem. From this position your Committee recedes with emphasis. 



The Committee considers that the rigidity and inelasticity of that system, 

 which has been followed for more than a century, unfits it for the adequate 

 expression of modern conceptions in Zoology, and that therefore a strict 

 adherence to it is a hindrance rather than a help to the progress of science. 

 It believes that strict binomialism in nomenclature has had its day of 

 greatest usefulness and necessary existence ; and that at present it can only 

 be allowed equal place in nomenclature by the side of that more flexible, 

 elastic, and adequate system of trinomials to which the Committee hopes 

 that your action upon its Report will give formal place among the Canons 

 of nomenclature. 



The proper place and office of binomials may be formulated in the follow- 

 ing Canon. 



o 



Canon X. Binomial nomenclature consists in applying to 

 every individual organism, and to the aggregate of such organ- 

 isms not known now to intergrade in physical characters with 

 other organisms, two names, one of which expresses the specific 

 distinctness of the organism from all others, the other its super- 

 specific indistinctness from, or generic identity with, certain 

 other organisms, actual or implied ; the former name being 

 the specific, the latter the generic designation ; the two to- 

 gether constituting the technical name of any specifically dis- 

 tinct organism. 



Remarks. — The Committee finds little or nothing to cite in illustration 

 or amplification of this Canon. The binomial nomenclature having been 

 considered indispensable and all-sufficient, — in sliort as a foregone conclu- 

 sion, — it has received abounding indiscriminate praise, but little searching 

 and discriminating criticism. Your Committee is far from venturing to do 

 away with it at present. It has attempted to define it with more strict- 

 ness than has perhaps been done before, and by so doing to limit its opera- 

 tion to those cases in which it may still be found useful. The system is, 



