THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 57 
With the exception of certain verbal modifications, this law is identical 
with the sixth section of the British Association rules, where it is applied 
to genera only. 
5. In any subsequent alterations of the limits of a group, its name 
should never be cancelled ; but should be retained either in a restricted or 
an enlarged sense. 
The necessity for such a limitation is obvious; otherwise a different 
name would (or, could) be given by every author who differed from pre- 
ceding ones in his ideas of the precise limitation of any group in question. 
This indeed has already been done, and, if continued, will create lament- 
able confusion; but this limitation should itself be subject to one 
exception, which may be formulated thus : 
6. But any assemblage so defined by an author as harshly to violate 
the groupings of nature (as known to naturalists of his time), should be 
cancelled. 
Such a rule would prevent the injury which might accrue to science by 
too close an application of the preceding law. The parenthetical limita- 
tion seems, however, to be necessary. 
II. Changes in the name of one group should not affect the names of 
other groups. 
. This follows as a corollary of the first canon, but it has been not 
infrequently violated, and it is easy to perceive the cause. The nomen- 
clature of higher groups, notably of families and ‘subfamilies, has, to a 
‘considerable degree, been founded upon generic names, with the addition 
of special collective endings to the root (see recommendation 1). Now, 
when a generic name which has formed the basis of a family designation 
has been found to be pre-occupied, it has been thought necessary by some 
to recast the nomenclature of the higher group. But why? After a name 
has been long applied to a group, it ceases to have any intrinsic meaning 
and is simply associated with the group itself, recalling it without reference 
to any particular member of the same. It certainly would be agreeable if 
we had a nomenclature in which each group should by the very association 
of ideas recall its members; but since that is utterly impossible, and we 
have to deal with a mass of synonyms already tangled and intricate, our 
problem is—how best to make our way out of the difficulty without a con- 
tinual wrangling over names and entailing endless disputes upon future 
generations. 
