NOTES ON NOMENCLATURE II. 277 



is based, we English, at any rate, ought to abide by it. 

 Setting this one point aside, the Code is, I believe, thoroughly 

 catholic, and in all respects a credit to our country, and it 

 grieves me to see English naturalists hankering" after the flesh 

 pots of Egypt, and striving, under cover of a misinterpretation 

 of the Code, and a confusion of its recommendations for the 

 future with its rules for the past, to approximate to the practices 

 of Foreign naturalists who, for the most part in nomenclature, 

 as in all other matters, run, according to our sober British ideas, 

 into extremes. 



And now what does the Code say in regard to such changes 

 as the Editors of the Ibis advocate when they gibbet Capt. 

 Shelley for the use of the name brasilianus ? 



le A name may be changed when it implies a false proposition 

 which is likely to propagate important errors.'" 



Note how guarded the rule — it is not sufficient that the name 

 implies a false proposition ; it must also be liable to propagate 

 errors, and these errors must be important. 



Now the name " brasilianus, " doubtless, implies a false pro- 

 position, but the time has long past when it could propagate any 

 error — the species and its habitat being thoroughly well known, 

 to science, — and the rejection of the name in such a case is there- 

 fore impliedly barred. 



" If such proper names of places," say the authors of the 

 Code, " as Covent Garden, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Newcastle, 

 Bridge water, &c, no longer suggest the ideas of gardens, 

 fields, castles or bridges, but refer the mind with the quick- 

 ness of thought to the particular localities which they res- 

 pectively designate, there seems no reason why the proper 

 names used in Natural History should not equally perform 

 the office of correct indication, even when their etymological 

 meaning may be wholly inapplicable to the object they typify." 



"We must not, however, halt here — this was the major propo- 

 sition, but to it were appended riders, which not to quote would 

 be to do injustice to the broad and comprehensive views of the 

 framers of the Code. They go on to say — 



" But we must remember that the language of science has 

 but a limited currency, and hence the words which compose it 

 do not circulate with the same freedom and rapidity as those 

 which belong to every-day life. The attention is consequently 

 liable in scientific studies to be diverted from the contemplation 

 of the thing signified to the etymological meaning of the sign, 

 and hence it is necessary to provide that the latter shall not be 

 such as to propagate actual error. Instances of this kind are 

 indeed very rare, and in some cases, such as that of Monodon, 

 Caprimulgus, Paradisea apoda and Monoculus, they have 



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