■2^2 Allen oji Zoological Nomenclature. [October 



name of what rnay be supposed to be the stock form, or that from 

 which the others have been differentiated ; but the objection to 

 this would be the liability to disagreement among zoologists as to 

 what was the stock form, and thus open the way to diversity of 

 ruling, which adherence to the rule of priority prevents. 



In this way we have provision for designating all possible 

 degrees and qualities of relationship in the connecting links 

 between subspecies. This, added to the trinomial system, 

 allows for a degree of refinement in the expression of relationship 

 sufhcient to meet every possible contingency. It furnishes a 

 system at once complete and exhaustive, and involves the use of 

 no more terms than Mr. Seebohm's compromise contemplates. 

 We simply ring the changes on the two hyphenized words 

 m.aking up Mr. Seebohm's third term. It likewise should prove 

 a check upon the tendency on the part of indiscreet authors to 

 invent new terms in their struggle to give 'handles to facts' in 

 geographical variation among animals. I do not see wh}' the 

 system may not apply equally well to other classes of animals, 

 and indeed in palaeontology, where we have intermediate phases 

 due to gradual differentiation in time, as well as under the 

 geogi'aphical condition of space, the principle involved being the 

 same. 



But what does all this give us as a system of nomenclature? 

 Not a ^rmominal one certainly, but rather a polynomial or, as 

 Dr. Coues would say (see anteh p. 321), a polyonymal, one j 

 and yet one not in any way comparable with the polyonymal system 

 of pr£e-Linnfean writers, but one based on a definite principle, and 

 contrived with reference to the expression of ascertained facts in 

 the evolution of life. 



The only objection to the system is its cumbrousness, and this, at 

 first sight, seems a grave one when compared with the binomial 

 (or dionymal) system, but when weighed in view of the great 

 degree of precision and refinement of expression attainable, the 

 question as to its utility is certainly an open one. Were there 

 not evidently a feeling on the part of at least a few leading 

 zoologists that even a trinomial (or trionymal) system, while a 

 step in the right direction, fails to meet the requirements of the 

 case, as so forcibly stated by Professor Flower in his closing re- 

 marks already given in this paper, I shoidd not have ventured 

 upon the suggestions above made. These, as above shown, 



