106 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1257 



and education, as here is where the burden 

 falls most heavily on the workers who are not 

 systematists. No taxonomist should have the 

 heart and if possible shoiild not have the 

 power or the opportunity by shifting a genus 

 or rearranging species to foist upon a patient 

 world the necessity of adopting a new com- 

 bination in the name of the common species 

 imiversally referred to in anatomy, medicine, 

 agriculture or other lines of applied science. 



I have elsewhere hinted at the discouraging 

 nature of these nomenclatural acrobatics to 

 the student entering on zoological work. I 

 have good reason to believe that many promis- 

 ing and brilliant young workers have been 

 disgusted and drawn to other fields of effort 

 because of the complexities and apparently 

 senseless chaos involved in the synonymy of 

 many of our common animals. Think of 

 thirty-six different specific combinations for 

 the oyster-shell scale (that is 36 the last time 

 I had occasion to note the niimber) or twenty- 

 six for the screw worm fly. 



Particularly aggravating are such cases as 

 the mosquito, cattle-tick and other forms re- 

 lated to disease and necessarily used by med- 

 ical students. Clearly one of the most help^ 

 ful things in zoological education would be a 

 condition of stability in nomenclature which 

 would permit us to assure our prospective 

 zoologists of the coming generation that they 

 would not have to learn and unlearn a suc- 

 cession of scientific names for the things 

 with which they deal. 



Some cases would be amusing if they were 

 not so tragically wasteful in valuable time. I 

 recall a student of cytology who was greatly 

 puzzled because the chromosomes of two sup- 

 posedly distinct species under different generic 

 names were exactly the same, and whose relief 

 may be imagined when he learned that they 

 were one species identified from different col- 

 lections under names of different vintage. 

 He might well have been disgusted as well 

 as relieved. 



It is rather dangerous to suggest remedies 

 or reform in this line but I venture to offer 

 one, which is that systematists curb their 

 desire to form new genera and limit these so 



far as possible to new species or use special 

 care not to shift into a new genus any of the 

 common species whose names have been for a 

 long time in general use. The concept of 

 genus is an indefinite one; more than the 

 species it may be subject to wide individual 

 interpretation, but to multiply generic names 

 and so necessitate the renaming of a great 

 number of common well-known species is a 

 most lamentable affair. To do it without 

 most essential taxonomic needs is indefen- 

 sible. To do it because some other group has 

 a greater ratio of genera to species, as recently 

 advocated by a well-known authority in a cer- 

 tain group, seems to imply a total disregard 

 of the real needs and purposes of a nomencla- 

 torial system. 



ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



The great problems of human society, racial, 

 sexual, industrial, commercial, have their basic 

 foundations in conditions that are funda- 

 mentally zoological — that is, dependent upon 

 the animal nature of man and having their 

 roots far back in the soil of animal life of 

 which man is a part, even if he is the most 

 recent and dominant of the process of evolu- 

 tion. 



Whether we will or not, we must recognize 

 these inherited conditions and capacities of 

 our species and may well consider in what 

 regard the fundamental laws of evolution ap- 

 ply to present-day problems of hvunan develop- 

 ment. Shall we still adhere to the idea of 

 brute force as the determining factor in the 

 survival of the fittest or shall we adjust our 

 vision to the conception of ideas of justice, 

 morality, love for the beautiful and of ethical 

 standards as the highest and most advanced 

 product of that great force of evolution which 

 we, as zoologists, most confidently accept as 

 the method of the universe? Shall we do our 

 utmost to preserve and develop these latest, 

 finest, most attractive products of evolution, 

 or permit them to degenerate like vestiges of 

 unused organs? 



Possibly I may- have been alone, but I 

 suspect that many of my zoological friends 

 have found the past few months a time of soul- 



