526 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 772 



but the waves as received were too weak to 

 visibly affect the neon, although we tried every 

 arrangement of the limited apparatus at our 

 command. The electric wave sent out by the 

 Baltic's apparatus was, according to Mr. 

 Bates about 800 feet long. 



Wm. L. Dudley 

 Vandeebilt University 



fundulus luci^ again in new jersey 

 On July 28, 1909, I secured a single small 

 example of this species in a little inlet, which 

 empties into Barnegat Bay several miles below 

 Seaside Park, on Island Beach in Ocean 

 County. The inlet was well choked up with 

 grass, so that the water was perfectly still and 

 formed a little brackish pond. Only multi- 

 tudes of Cyprinodon variegatus and many 

 young Fundulus majalis were found associ- 

 ated. I mention this record simply as it is 

 the most northern at which Fundulus lucice 

 is known to occur. Henry W. Fowler 



Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 Philadelphia, Pa. 



the burden of nomenclature 

 The scientific white man's burden is largely 

 one of names and no one knows better than 

 the zoologist how great the incubus has be- 

 come. Names in boundless profusion are 

 heaped upon him — many of them needless 

 synonyms — and, worst of all, no two zoologists 

 can agree upon any one particular name for 

 any one particular genus or species. The 

 efforts of individuals, of committees and of 

 conventions to enforce agreement according 

 to rule have failed and it is not surprising that 

 widespread disgust prevails because of the 

 nomenclatural confusion which exists. No 

 code of rules yet devised for the purpose of 

 fixing a single name on each entity has proved 

 adequate to check the changes which go mer- 

 rily on year after year. In fact zoological 

 nomenclature to-day seems to be little more 

 than an intricate game of names, fascinating 

 sport for its faitliful devotees, but an intol- 

 erable nuisance for the uninitiated many! A 

 few specialists interested in the game have 

 made all the rules and done all the playing, 

 and they are directly responsible for the 



changes. Nothing has been let alone long 

 enough to become stable, not even the codes. 



One of the principal reasons why codes fail 

 is because individual opinion interprets them. 

 Conventions bark up the wrong tree — it is not 

 rules for " eliminating " genera that are 

 needed so much as rules for eliminating indi- 

 vidual opinion. The zoologist consumer would 

 seem to be in the clutches of a word-trust that 

 furnishes him not with what he needs but with 

 what he can get according to canon X, T or Z ; 

 and we all know what a fertile field for the 

 exploitation of rules and canons ornithology 

 has been. In the latest code of nomenclature 

 — ^that published by the American Ornitholo- 

 gists' Union in July, 1908 — ^the same ponder- 

 ous machinery constructed in 1842 is made to 

 do duty. The wheels and cogs have been re- 

 paired and repolished several times during the 

 intervening years but as a machine for grind- 

 ing out stable names it has proved signally 

 inadequate. A check-list of North American 

 birds issued in 1886 has already been revised 

 and corrected, according to code, in no less 

 than fifteen supplements and the end is not in 

 sight. This is but a sample of the instability 

 to be found in all branches of zoology. 



Now, as a matter of fact, unpractical zoolo- 

 gists have long put up with a nuisance that 

 business men would not have tolerated a mo- 

 ment. Practical business men settled tele- 

 graphic nomenclature, for instance, by pub- 

 lishing a code of over a thousand million pro- 

 nounceable words with at least two letters 

 difference between them, and surely zoological 

 nomenclature, with but a small fraction of 

 that number of names, should not be a hope- 

 less proposition. We all know how many 

 things are standardized — even the languages 

 of France and of Spain. If a national acad- 

 emy sets the standard for language, are zool- 

 ogists unable to establish a standard for zool- 

 ogical language by an international academy 

 of their own? Something of this sort is 

 urgently needed, for nomenclature is an art 

 and not a science. Codes do not evolve but 

 are made for convenience and we should quit 

 bowing down to precedent and burning in- 

 cense before the shrine of priority if we seek 

 stability. Priority is rather a bog from which 



