June 25, 1900] 



SCIENCE 



999 



unnaturally considering it as of little signifi- 

 cance whetlier the species selected as illus- 

 trative of a group was called " the type " or 

 " the example " of it, regarded Fischer in 

 these cases as having designated the type with 

 the usual train of consequences under the 

 rules. Jukes-Brown holds that of course 

 Fischer did nothing of the kind, examples not 

 necessarily being types. 



I should be willing to argue either side of 

 this if paid for it — but not otherwise ! It is a 

 law-point pure and simple and a dry one at that. 

 It is not of the very smallest import to any 

 aspect of science which way it is decided. To 

 flip a coin would be a good way to settle it. 

 Tet in the present state of things it is quite 

 supposable that Dr. Dall and Mr. Jukes- 

 Brown, in order to reach a working agree- 

 ment as to the nomenclature of the Veneridffi 

 which is of scientific import, may feel com- 

 pelled to give considerable amounts of their 

 time, and considerable space in a crowded 

 journal, to a necessarily inconclusive attempt 

 to thresh it out. 



It is a sin and a shame, a reproach to sci- 

 ence and scientific men, that the time of 

 master specialists, every available moment of 

 which is needed by science, should be taken 

 up by utterly vain questions like this, which 

 any whipper-snapper just out of a law school 

 could actually handle better than they can be- 

 cause trained for it and not taking it so much 

 in earnest. And their time is taken up by 

 questions like this, and it has to be under the 

 present lack of system. 



And what, pray, is the great difficulty in 

 settling these things as they should be settled ? 

 If the next International Zoological Congress 

 voted to establish an international court of 

 five members sitting for three months annually 

 to decide in writing every question submitted, 

 with or without argument, taking counsel with 

 specialists when necessary, publishing its de- 

 cisions in an annual volume with or without 

 the course of reasoning in each case, how 

 many years would it take before the main 

 questions were all settled and the business of 

 the court reduced to a thin trickle of new 

 puzzles ? Of course such a court should have 

 absolute power to settle absolutely everything 



nomenclatorial except questions of natural 

 fact and scientific interpretation. Equally 

 of course it would have to treat the priority 

 rule as a prima facie rule made by sane men 

 for sane men, not as the superstition and in- 

 cubus it has become. If they saw fit to rule 

 in one auction catalogue as a nomenclatorial 

 source for merely practical reasons, and rule 

 out another for similar reasons, they should 

 have a free hand to do so without feeling that 

 any one by being the first to name, or perhaps 

 mis-name, a natural object thereby acquired 

 a vested right to retard the progress of science 

 for centuries. Of course in the present ab- 

 sence of such a tribunal, or of any tribunal, 

 an absolute priority rule has an excuse as be- 

 ing the nearest present approach to a universal 

 touchstone for our names, and so long as that 

 situation endures systematists are bound to 

 live strictly up to it. But with such a tri- 

 bunal suggested the direful necessity for it 

 would pass away, and the " Museum Smithia- 

 num," 1832, having once been ruled in we 

 could then apply its names and learn them 

 without the probability of someone's discover- 

 ing next year that the " Museum Jonesianum "■ 

 — date hitherto unknown — was in fact pub- 

 lished in 1831. N"ay more, a discovery that 

 the " Museum Smithianum " was a rank 

 forgery and in large part non-binomial need 

 not worry us. Once ruled in or out, mista- 

 kenly or not, it stays so. The name " Octopus " 

 once adjudicated to be the name of the group 

 typified by 0. vulgaris L. stays so no matter 

 how clear the proof that the court ought by 

 every known rule to have made it " Polypus."' 

 Is there any ethical question involved? No. 

 And does it matter to science which it is 

 called? Not an iota so long as we know 

 which. 



Would it not tend to " crystallize " and 

 " fossilize " science ? No, but it would tend 

 to crystallize and fossilize the artificial Latin 

 nomenclature of science which ought to be 

 crystallized and fossilized, and the sooner the 

 better. Of course no tribunal can ever pass 

 on the question whether a given form is a 

 variety, a subspecies or a species ; whether it 

 belongs to this or to that genus or subgenus; 

 what are the limits of a family; nor on any 



