2894 THE ZooLoGisT—JANUARY, 1872. 
one. Entertaining views so diametrically opposite, it is impossible 
we can agree in the details. To the soundest of all nomenclaturists 
we are indepted for the utter confusion that now obtains in nomen- 
clature! it was Latreille himself who wrote, “I acknowledge no 
law but that of priority.” Thirty years subsequently a little band 
of so-called reformers discovered this law, and talked it over, and 
gave it another meaning: they said “ This shows us that we ought 
to investigate every name, and see if we cannot find another and 
older name:” they went at it tooth and nail, and changed every 
name that could be changed for another name: thirty years they 
have been busied in this work, until the entire okject of names is 
frustrated; and when we read of Cupido Thetis, and such un- 
familiar creatures, we know not what is meant; the name conveys 
no image to the mind. The Committee of learned Thebans en- 
trusted with this task knew well it would be unpalatable to the 
world of naturalists, because so difficult to be understood: a few 
of the very learned only could penetrate the mystery; something 
more was wanting to render it attractive to the masses: a happy 
expedient suggested itself, a “great novelty,” an “unparalleled 
attraction,” “so simple,” “so ingenious”! this was the printing of 
the specific name without the initial capital, thus, oweni, grayi, 
waterhousei, stricklandi. This was a decided hit, and the micro- 
philosophers who failed to follow the arguments for changing the 
name of Lycena Adonis to Cupido Thetis were delighted to depose 
the initial capitals, because the feat was performed with such 
facility, and it became as fashionable to write brown, jones and 
robinson, without the initial capitals, as to avow a belief in qui- 
narianism, table-turning, relations of analogy, or spirit-rapping, or, 
to come down to our time, in darwinism or spontaneous generation. 
To his infinite credit, Mr. Kirby has avoided this snare, this lu re 
this tinsel; still he swallows the pill of name-changing, though 
stripped of its gilding. He lays down laws for this name-changing ; 
for instance—“IV. The name of every genus which has been 
previously employed in either Zoology or Botany should [be] 
changed.” He little knows the length to which this would lead 
him, or the difficulties which would surround him if he attempted 
to carry it rigidly into practice. The macro-philosophers, those 
who study Nature for her own sake, who employ names as we 
employ our own names, simply as a necessary, or, if you will, a 
convenient distinction, will certainly discard these puerilities as 
