128 Inexpediency of altering established Terms. 



then become quite hopeless, and the curse of Babel would 

 be entailed on the scientific world. Natural history would 

 become divided into nations and languages; each country 

 would remain in happy ignorance of the state of the science 

 among its neighbours; and we should have genera and species 

 described as new which had been known for twenty years in 

 France or Germany. Surely there are at present sufficient 

 impediments to scientific intercourse (such as loss of time 

 and money, passports, quarantine, duties on books, and the 

 like), without further obliging the traveller to learn a new 

 scientific nomenclature in each country previously to visiting 

 its museums, or conversing with its professors. 



This "improving" system has already gone far enough to 

 afford a fair specimen of its merits. Any one who will take 

 the trouble to examine the various papers on ornithological 

 nomenclature in the Analyst, will find that specific names are 

 as variable as the London fashions. Every new number of 

 that work contains some fresh change in the nomenclature ; 

 and sage reasons are given why the names invented, three 

 months before, by A. B., are not satisfactory to C. D. When 

 the golden rule of priority is once laid aside, there seems to 

 be no limit to these alterations ; for, however appropriate a 

 nomenclature may be, dabblers in science will always be found 

 who will prefer terms of their own coinage to those which are 

 already established. The result will be, that, after these ob- 

 scure individuals have involved the science in an inextricable 

 maze of confusion, the real cultivators of zoology will cut 

 the Gordian knot, and fall back upon the names originally 

 established by the fathers of the science ; names recognised 

 in all standard works, and current among naturalists in all 

 parts of the world. Then will the nomenclature of Linnaeus, 

 Cuvier, and Temminck triumph over the crude inventions of 

 a host of anonymous scribblers.* 



That these proposed innovations will never be adopted by 

 the highest class of naturalists is my firm belief. If I am 

 mistaken in this point; if three fourths of the terms now 

 current in science must and 'will be called in, and a new coin- 

 age issued ; then, at least, let that coinage proceed from a 

 duly authorised mint. Let a committee be appointed; not 

 from the "Constant Headers" of a provincial magazine, but 

 from the most eminent naturalists of every country where the 



* Sir James E. Smith, quoted by Swainson (Birds, vol. i. p. 245.), 

 says, " Those who alter names, often lor the worse, according to arbitrary 

 rules of their own, or in order to aim at consequence which they cannot 

 otherwise attain, are best treated with silent neglect. The system should 

 not be encumbered with such names, even as synonymes." 



