148 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 761 



As a lawyer, Mr. Balcli does not need to be 

 reminded that there are two sides to every 

 question (else there were no lawyers), and in 

 this case I venture to believe that what is 

 needed is not a court, but more power to our 

 legislature. 



Courts have existed since before the days of 

 Hammurabi, say some 5,000 years; yet I read 

 last month in one of the current magazines an 

 article by a Philadelphia lawyer (and his tribe 

 has been proverbial for acumen these hundred 

 years), writing from his own experience, that 

 in the courts of that city the decision in a case 

 of simple fraud was had only after three years 

 delay ; and that business men were submitting 

 to robbery or arranging arbitrations, rather 

 than to take the uncertain chances of court 

 justice in that city. And similar complaints 

 in other cities are so common as to excite no 

 interest except in the parties concerned. 



We will admit that the complexity of busi- 

 ness afiairs makes common-sense justice a diffi- 

 cult ideal to attain, yet it seems as if one 

 would not gain much by instituting nomencla- 

 torial courts. 



Nomenclature has existed in its binomial 

 form, which alone concerns us, for 150 years, 

 and in its present shape is a development or 

 evolution from more simple conditions. It is 

 common to hear nomenclature treated as an 

 unimportant and unscientific matter, and the 

 discussion of its principles denounced as 

 trivial and unworthy the attention of those 

 capable of research. 



On the contrary, I am prepared to maintain 

 the thesis that except the strictly accurate 

 determination of the facts of science and 

 their interrelations, nomenclature is the most 

 important branch of any science. It is not 

 unworthy of the best and most thorough study 

 that clear heads can devote to it. It is, in 

 short, the summation of all the facts of science 

 in systematic form; without a strictly devised 

 nomenclature there could be no science worthy 

 of the name. It is to science, regarded as the 

 facts of the cosmos, what language is to man- 

 kind, without which they could not have risen 

 above the brutes. 



With a muddled nomenclature nothing can 

 be clear, and, far from being ignored by men 

 of science, this was recognized as early as 

 Adanson in 175Y, a year before the tenth 

 edition of Linnaeus. 



Owing chiefly to the difficulty of prompt 

 intercommunication between scientific men, it 

 was only after posts, railways, etc., began to 

 alter ancient conditions that scientific men 

 began to get together on general questions of 

 nomenclature. In 1842 the result of some 

 yeai-s of discussion was the appointment of a 

 legislature, in the form of a British Associa- 

 tion Committee, to prepare laws and formu- 

 late the rules of practise which had grown up 

 by a sort of common consent. There was. 

 then, as now, a certain number of dissidents, 

 but they did not count for much. This legis- 

 lature was British, but its code was adopted at 

 once by the American Association and very 

 shortly by the scientists of all civilized coun- 

 tries. 



A truly international status was given to- 

 the code, when the committee of the Interna- 

 tional Zoological Congress to consider nomen- 

 clature was appointed. This committee has. 

 met the growing complexity of the subject in 

 the most satisfactory manner, though by neces- 

 sity always a little behind the growth of the- 

 science. A person can not be considered com- 

 petent to discuss nomenclature unless he- 

 knows and understands the rules of the inter- 

 national code. Many do not, yet " rush in,"" 

 hence much unnecessary controversy. 



The object of this legislature has been to 

 make a series of rules (:^laws) which any 

 intelligent person by careful study can utilize- 

 to settle nomenclatorial questions. The cases 

 which can not be settled by a rigid application' 

 of the code are rare. There are some such and 

 they arise chiefly out of the existence of cer- 

 tain scientific works or systems which ap- ' 

 peared in the formative period of nomencla- 

 ture and about which the question arises, " Are- 

 they to be accepted as binomial ? " or, '' Should 

 they, being binomial, but long obsolete or 

 practically unknown, be admitted to disturb 

 names which, though not entitled by the code- 

 to stand, have yet become useful through, 

 familiarity ? " 



