4010 The Zoologist — June, 1874. 



My object in giving these facts and synonyms is to show that 

 the species are by no means new discoveries or additions to the 

 British list, but they are additional and supplementary to the first 

 edition of the ' History of British Quadrupeds,' and therefore cor- 

 rectly stated in the passage I have cited. 



As regards the numerous changes of names which T have pointed 

 out I express no opinion. There are two schools of nomenclature 

 now before the public ; the members of one school are attached, 

 dogmatically and perhaps doggedly, to the received and established 

 names they have used from childhood; they strain every nerve, 

 urge every plea, perhaps unduly, for retaining them ; the other, 

 believing themselves under the guidance of the Rules of the 

 "British Association for the Advancement of Science" — a decided 

 misapprehension — search authorities, feiTet out forgotten records, 

 in fine strain every nerve to find obsolete ones. As an old man 

 I am a member of the former; as a young man Mr. Alston is a 

 member of the latter ; I believe both of us are thoroughly in order, 

 but my own proclivity is selfish, to please myself; Mr. Alston's may 

 be to please others. 1 only say " may be," but this is certain, as 

 an industrious, energetic aspirant for fame, he would defeat his own 

 object were it otherwise ; he would be despised, he would condemn 

 himself, did he make no change in nomenclature. 



Feeling the intense interest I do in the ' Zoologist,' it will sur- 

 prise no one that I should be disappointed at seeing Dr. Gray's 

 names so soon sunk as synonyms and his admirable papers so 

 utterly ignored; but the case is scarcely the same with Mr. Scott's 

 ' Descriptive Catalogue of Pinnated Mammalia, Recent and Fossil.' 

 This admirable work, like Dr. Gray's, should have been constantly 

 before the author, should have been quoted in every page. I say 

 nothing of Mr. Scott's combination of Seals and Cetacea, which 

 may appear to some difficult to reconcile, but there is an amount 

 of research displayed throughout his labours, an intimate acquaint- 

 ance with both recent and fossil sucklers, both as regards the 

 objects themselves and the books which treat of them, the value of 

 which it is impossible to overrate. It seems to me no work on the 

 aquatic sucklers can be considered of authority unless it exhibits 

 an intimate acquaintance with all the bibliology of Cetacea, and in 

 that study Mr. Scott's stands in the first rank. 



There are also points of great interest connected with our ter- 

 restrial sucklers which I could have wished to have seen fully 



