April 19, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



391 



all of the fourth declension; visus, auditits, 

 gustos, olfactus, and tactus. Awkward as is 

 any plural form of these words in English, 

 the anatomist has to come to it, and speak of 

 " arcuses, ductuses, and fetuses," or else appear 

 to talk bad Latin, and repeat the singular 

 form. 



The mistaking of an unusual gender, such 

 as a Greek masculine of the first declension, 

 or a Greek feminine of the second, is still 

 easier, as here the erroneous form soimds to 

 U3 right, and the correct form incorrect. It 

 takes a bold man indeed to speak of Erigeron 

 iellidifolius or Plethodon glutinosus, where 

 the masculine form used for the genus looks 

 like a neuter, and it seems to us still more 

 iinnatural to say Desmognathus fusca, instead 

 of the (to us) more natural fuscus. Unfortu- 

 nately this mistake was made at the original 

 naming of this species by Spencer F. Baird 

 in January, 1S50, and this initial mistake 

 was followed by several illustrious men, both 

 anatomists and systematists, among others by 

 Wiedersheim (18S7), W. K. Parker (1879), 

 Boulenger (1882), and as late as 1909, by 

 Gadow. On the other hand the correct form 

 fusca was used by Cope (1889), by the 

 later systematists, G. M. Allen, Fowler and 

 Dunn, and in the anatomical and embryolog- 

 ical writings of Kingsbury, Hilton, Mrs. See- 

 lye, Mrs. Wilder, H. H. Wilder and others. 

 Moore, in describing his new Salamander, 

 Leurognathus marmorata, used the correct 

 feminine form for the specific name, as did 

 also Dunn in his new sub-species of Desmog- 

 nathus, ochrophaea carolinesis. Since now, 

 practically all the writings of the last decade 

 have corrected the old errors, and restored 

 Desmognathus to its proper gender, it is a 

 great pity that in the new (1917) check list 

 of Reptiles and Amphibians by Stejneger and 

 Barbour, the old erroneous masculine form is 

 brought back again, and we find Desmognathus 

 ftiscus in all its shame. And, in addition to 

 this, come all the other Desmognathoe; ochro- 

 phaea, quadrimaculata (or, following the orig- 

 inal error, quadramaculata), and the sub-si>e- 

 cies auriculata, all changed, to the masculine 

 like the maiden Coenis of the poet Ovid, ap- 



pearing in the form of nondescript gynandro- 

 morphs! Let us hope that, unlike this change- 

 able person, the species thus transmuted will 

 not become invulnerable. 



But, having once, in flat defiance of Homer, 

 Herodotus, and every other Greek writer from 

 Hesiod to Eleutherios Venizelos, changed the 

 grammatical gender of the noun yvaQot; it- 

 becomes necessary to change also the specific 

 name of Moore's Leurognathus, which, instead 

 of appearing as Moore originally gave it 

 (1899), as Leurognathus marmorata, is also 

 masculinized as Leurognathus marmoratus. 



Still more unfortunate are the mistakes in 

 quoting both Moore and Dunn, the former 

 being quoted as having originally used the 

 form in -us, which he did not, and the latter, 

 as having ■nTitten ochrophaeus carolinesis. 

 whereas he was most careful to use the fem- 

 inine in -a. Altogether it is a bad mix-up, 

 and being in a check-list, which will be used 

 as an authority for years to come, it may 

 actually foist this glaring solecism upon Amer- 

 ican herpetologists beyond the power of cor- 

 rection. 



Mark Twain, in his rules for improving the 

 German language, suggests the reconstruction 

 of their genders in accordance with the plan 

 of the Creator, " as a tribute of respect if 

 nothing else." In the correction of " Des- 

 mognathus fuscus " we have a chance to show 

 some respect to the Greek language. 



Harris Hawthorne Wilder 



a molluscan garden pest 

 In a previous number of Science* the writer 

 called attention to the presence of a slug 

 {AgrioUmax agrestis Linn.) in gardens which 

 was doing considerable damage to such veget- 

 ables as cauliflower, lettuce and potatoes. 

 During the past summer (1917) and early fall 

 this slug has become much more troublesome 

 and in some localities has caused considerable 

 damage. 



At Brewerton, N. Y., it was observed eating 

 cabbages and potatoes; in Syracuse it has at- 

 tacked potatoes, causing a large amount of in- 

 jury in several fields and gardens. The writer 

 1 Science, N. S., Vol. XLIII., p. 136, 1916. 



