THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 29 
in 1871, adopts the roth edition of the same work (1758), and says dis- 
tinctly :— Every name given before 1758 loses its right.” Others go back 
to various earlier dates. If the earliest Linnæan edition comes to be 
claimed as having a prior right over those that followed, as symptoms 
indicate, then there will be a sweeping away of landmarks, that will make 
the lesser floods hitherto experienced seem as nothing. : 
The result of all these efforts at stability, for that is the avowed object 
of the advocates of rigid priority of date, is extreme confusion,* instead 
of the agreement hoped for when the Code of the British Association was 
adopted, and students of one branch of Entomology at least are at a loss 
to know where the Nomenclature stands to-day, and are very certain that 
under the present order of things there will not be aname familiar to them 
that 20 or 50 years hence will not be supplanted under the claims of. 
priority. | 
The Code of the British Association not only has not been adoptedin 
detail by the British naturalists, who might be supposed to have given 
their assent toit, but it has not been adopted in other countries.f It is 
not the law of France nor of Germany. In the latter country, in 1858, a 
Code of Nomenclature was adopted by the Dresden Congress, in which 
the Rule on the subject of priority more sensibly meets the requirements 
* Prof. Verrill, in his comment on Rule 2, says:—‘‘ Disregard of this important 
) 2 Bay, 8 
and essential law (viz., fixing the 12th edition as the starting point,) has brought into 
) 
Conchology, and some other branches of Zoology, an almost incredible amount of con- 
fusion.” 
+ ‘‘ Notwithstanding the Rules sanctioned by the authority of the Brit. Ass’n, 
it would not seem that any perceptible improvement has taken place.” —G. R. Crotch, 
Cist. Ent., 1872 
Mr. Kirby has revised, &c., ‘‘in accordance with a series of Rules selected from 
those issued by the Brit. Ass’n for 1865.”— Wallace. 
- Dr. Thorell ‘‘refers to the old Brit. Ass’n Rules with general approval, but differs 
from them in some important points.” —J/bid. 
Dr. Staudinger lays down eight rules that vary from those of the Brit. Ass’n or 
from Kirby and Thorell in several particulars. And Gemminger and Harold’s Cat. 
Coleopt. differs in the Rules applied from all the others. See Wallace. As to 
French authors, the following extract of a letter to me from a distinguished English 
Entomologist will show how heterodox is their position :—‘‘The chief- confusion in 
generic Nomenclature is owing to the French, who consistently ignore or alter every 
thing done in other countries, on purpose to force their own names on the world in 
place of others.” 
