3130 Tne Zootocist—Juty, 1872. 
agree with Baron von Harold, who writes in ‘ Coleopterologische,’ 
Hefte vi. p. 37 :—“ The longer and more thoroughly that I occupy 
myself with the subject, the more the conviction forces itself upon 
me that a good part of our nomenclature, in so far as it has 
reference to the literature of the end of the last and beginning of 
the present century, is nothing more than a protracted and fixed 
chaos of arbitrariness, inconsequences and blunders, to the sifting 
and correct dealing with which hardly a beginning has been 
made.” All that the Rules of the British Association have done 
for us is to supply a ladle wherewith to mix up these undesirable 
elements. Mr. Lewis has a paragraph on one of the principal 
causes of the chaos, which he considers the disposition to rout 
out, appropriate and apply to individual objects, those worthless 
descriptions which have long been unrecognizable. In this matter 
I see with him “eye to eye.” 
“We need not feel surprise at these results. But I must and always 
shall feel surprise that the authors go into those questions as they do. 
Worthless in great part the old descriptions now are from one cause or 
another ; and whether they are recognisable or unrecognisable concerns not 
a living soul. But if they were the perfection of scientific labour, and 
contained truths of world-wide importance, the old books could hardly be 
more rigorously studied. ‘The ‘chaos’ referred to by authors is a ‘chaos’ 
created by and only now existing in these worthless descriptions ; and there 
is not a shadow of obligation to touch that chaos at all, in nineteen out of every 
twenty cases where it is touched. Those who bring us back to that ‘chaos’ 
and disturb our nomenclature with the results of their speculations on it, 
are themselves responsible for the condition of things which (so far as it 
exists) is of their own wilful introduction.”—P. 14. 
There are other sources of confusion, obviously introduced in 
many instances for the mere purpose of confusing, but as Mr. 
Lewis has passed over them in silence, so will I, and, turning to 
the end, will cite his concluding remarks :— 
‘** But there is still a remedy. Refuse acceptance to these new names, 
one and all. Treat them as the things which for the most part they are, 
a jumble of letters not accurately referable to any certain species. Let us 
adhere to the accepted names, approved by universal consent, which we are 
accustomed to use. Preserve the living names, ignore the dead. So only 
shall we achieve, in spite of the mischievous stalking-horse, ‘ priority,’ that 
certainty in nomenclature, the chance of which through it we have nearly 
