PRINCIPLES, CANONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 



37 



cific names which conform to the rules of binomial nomenclature, even when 

 they antedate the Xth edition of the ' Systema Naturae.' They even advo- 

 cate admission of Tournefort's generic names for Mollusks, published in 

 a posthumous work edited by Gautieri in 1742; the genera of Lanjj, 1722; 

 those of Klein, 1 731 and 1734; and those of Breyn, 1732. (Botanists, though 

 dating their departure in binomial nomenclature at 1737, the date of the first 

 edition of Linnaeus's 'Genera Plantarum,' adopt Tournefort's genera pub- 

 lislied in 1700 ) The French Commission and that of the Geological Con- 

 gress do not hesitate to say that the work of these authors is much better 

 than that of Linnsus, who, through vanity or inability to appreciate so well 

 the character of the work of his predecessors in Zoology as in Botany (he 

 being pre-eminently a botanist rather than a zoologist), systematically ig- 

 nored his more scientific predecessors. (4) Besides admitting the works 

 ot other earlier binomialists which the adoption of the Xllth edition would 

 exclude, the date 1758 clears up many questions of synonymy which arise 

 from Linnceus's himself having arbitrarily changed in the Xllth edition many 

 names introduced in the Xth, and in other cases used them in a different 

 sense. (5) Furthermore, it is admitted that in the original Stricklandian 

 draft the number of the edition was left blank, while the context clearly 

 implies that the Xth was the one in mind ; and there is nothing in § 2 of 

 the original B. A. Rules which prohibits the adoption of the Xth. (6) Fi- 

 nally, the adoption of the Xth ".vill necessitate very few changes in current 

 names (in the younger departments of Zoology none), while it forms a rational 

 and consistent starting-point towards which zoologists at large are drifting. 

 Therefore we have no hesitation in proposing as a substitute for § 2 of 

 the B. A. Code the foregoing Canon, which, applied to § 2, would make it 

 read as follows : — 



" The starting-point of the binomial system of nomenclature in Zoology 

 shall be the Xth (175S) edition of the 'Systema Naturae' of Linnaeus, and 

 the law of priority in regard to specific (and generic) names is therefore not 

 to extend to antecedent authors." 



There is no question as to the fitness of this rule as regards specific 

 names ; there may be in respect to generic names, since names were used 

 for groups in what may be considered a generic sense by many pre-Linnaean 

 writers, although the generic idea appears to have been essentially Linnasan. 

 As a matter of convenience, it seems highly advisalle to take the same start- 

 ing-point for both generic and specific names, and to have the generic names 

 adopted from pre-Linnaean authors date from their adoption by Linnaeus or 

 the first subsequent author who used them. Otherwise we endanger the 

 stability in nomenclature which all so much desire to establish, by leaving 

 open a mischievous loophole by means of which a well-established post-Lin- 

 ncean generic name may be displaced in favor of a pre-Linnaean one. (See 

 further on this point the second paragraph of the preamble to § 2 of the 

 B. A. Code.) In limiting the action of the law of priority to the Xth edition 



