Vol- XV-] Elliot, Canon XL, A. O. if. Code. 20:r 



1 898 J ^ - ' 



line of advancement and scientific progress. Tliis acknowledgment, 

 however, only emphasizes the fact that even good men can go 

 very widely astray. 



Let us look at this Canon XL ana see what are the reasons 

 adduced why errors should be permanent and all efforts to cor- 

 rect them and in many cases cause terms that are simply gibberish 

 to assume shapes possessed of intelligent meanings, be frustrated. 

 The great and only evil feared is " the abuse on the part of 

 the purists and classicists who look with disfavor upon anything 

 nomenclatural which is in the least degree unclassical in form" 

 and therefore, it continues, as may be naturally inferred from the 

 rule that follows, let us place the results of ignorance and care- 

 lessness beyond the reach of such learned marplots, so that no 

 blunders may ever again be corrected, and in this way we Avill 

 achieve an eternal stability in our nomenclature ! And so, if 

 when the genus Somateria was first proposed, some printer's 

 devil with a catarrhal affliction had caused it to appear as 

 ' Sobaberia,' under the dictum of this enlightened and highly 

 classical Canon that extraordinary combination must remain for- 

 ever as the author's idea of expressing a downy or woolly body ! 

 Of course refuge might be taken in the provision afforded in 

 Canon XL that typographical errors had been committed and 

 therefore the spelling might be corrected ; but this opens a very 

 wide door for the exercise of individual opinion, and unless an 

 author's original MS. was accessible, proof for or against this 

 fact could not be produced. And in reference to this point so 

 Tittle has the Committee believed in the fact that typographical 

 errors exist, that the writer is able to recall very few instances 

 where on this account any word has been corrected by it. No 

 doubt every one who has any knowledge of the matter, whether 

 or not he belongs to the reprehensible and excommunicated bodies 

 of purists and classicists, is convinced that sw/xa and Ipiov never 

 could properly compose ' sobaberia ' neither could TreStor and 

 oLK€Tr]? be correctly compounded into Pedioccetes, two blunders in 

 one word; yet the latter is solemnly adjudged by this wise and 

 strictly educational Article to be the only proper way of spelling 

 the o-eneric term for the Sharp-tailed Grouse ! 



Is not this terror of the amount of damage these dreadful pur- 



