376 ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



names should, as far as possible, be held sacred, both on the 

 grounds of justice to their authors and of practical convenience 

 to naturalists, we would strongly dissuade from the farther 

 continuance of a practice which is gratuitous in itself, and which 

 involves the necessity of altering long established specific 

 names. 



We have now pointed out the principal rocks and shoals 

 which lie in the path of the nomenclator ; and it will be seen 

 that the navigation through them is by no means easy. The 

 task of constructing a language which shall supply the de- 

 mands of scientific accuracy on the one hand, and of liter- 

 ary elegance on the other, is not to be inconsiderately under- 

 taken by unqualified persons. Our nomenclature presents but 

 too many flaws and inelegancies already, and as the stern law 

 of priority forbids their removal, it follows that they must re- 

 main as monuments of the bad taste or bad scholarship of 

 their authors to the latest ages in which zoology shall be stu- 

 died. 



[Families to endhildss, and Subfamilies in inae.] 



The practice suggested in the following proposition has been 

 adopted by many recent authors, and its simplicity and con- 

 venience is so great that we strongly recommend its universal 

 use. 



§ B. It is recommended that the assemblages of genera 

 termed families should be uniformly named by adding the 

 termination ida to the name of the earliest known, or most 

 typically characterized genus in them ; and that their sub- 

 divisions, termed Subfamilies, should be similarly constructed, 

 with the termination hies. 



These words are formed by changing the last syllable of the 

 genitive case into idee or ince, as Strix, btrigis, Strigida, Buceros, 

 Bucerotis, Bucerotida, not Strixides, Bucerida. 



[Specific names to be written with a small initial.'] 



A convenient memoria technica may be effected by adopting 

 our next proposition. It has been usual, when the titles of 

 species are derived from proper names, to write them with a 

 capital letter, and hence when the specific name is used alone 

 it is liable to be occasionally mistaken for the title of a genus. 

 But if the titles of species were invariably written with a small 

 initial, and those of genera with a capital, the eye would at 

 once distinguish the rank of the group referred to, and a 

 possible source of error would be avoided. It should be further 



