April 24, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



607 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESFONDENCE 



PRIORITY OVERWORKED 



Having personally been a consistent advo- 

 cate and praetiser of the generally accepted 

 rules of priority, for about fifty years,^ I have 

 no desire to criticize those vpho have, in recent 

 years, taken up the subject reasonably and 

 temperately, but it is possible in this, as in 

 most other things, to overdo the matter. My 

 objections to some of the recent rulings and 

 applications of the rigid priority rule are 

 threefold : 



First: I believe that the rejection of obvi- 

 ously obscene names should be enforced re- 

 gardless of priority. This has been done by 

 many excellent writers. 



Second: Names that have been pirated or 

 stolen from one author by another should be 

 rejected, if the dishonesty can be clearly 

 shown. The cases of this kind are fortunately 

 not numerous, but some are surprising. Such 

 names should not be allowed to pass current 

 any more than counterfeit money or forged 

 checks. 



Third : Names of species so badly described 

 that they can not be identified with reasonable 

 certainty should be rejected, especially if no 

 type is preserved. The writings of Linne and 

 other early writers contain many such species. 

 The arbitrary decision of any committee does 

 not alter the case, unless new evidence be 

 given. 



To illustrate the second proposition. I will 

 cite a case within my personal knowledge, only 

 omitting names and dates, for obvious reasons, 

 although the incident is not very recent and 

 the parties personally interested are mostly 

 dead. 



In this case two eminent and able natural- 

 ists and experts, equally interested in the same 



1 As an evidence of my earlier sentiments, I 

 would call attention to the fact that in 1869 (Am. 

 Jour. Science, Vol. XLVII., pp. 92-112), I re- 

 printed the 1845 British Association "Eules of 

 Zoological Nomenclature, ' ' with personal notes 

 and suggestions, as footnotes, nearly all of which 

 have been subsequently approved. See also same 

 Journal, Vol. III., 1872, p. 387. 



subjects, attend the meeting of a learned soci- 

 ety. Mr. A. reads a paper announcing the 

 discovery of a remarkable new genus and spe- 

 cies, say of vertebrates, giving it a MS. 

 generic and specific name. In the description 

 entirely new anatomical terms had to be 

 defined. Mr. B. listens and takes notes. 

 Within a few days B. publishes, in a scientific 

 journal, the discovery of the identical genus 

 and species as his own, and gives it a new 

 name, with no reference to A. His description 

 precedes that of A. by, say, two weeks. The 

 former description is practically the same as 

 the latter, only abbreviated, and even the same 

 newly coined anatomical terms are used, thus 

 proving that the description was a stolen one. 

 Moreover, it afterwards develops that B. had 

 never even seen a specimen of the creature 

 thus described. 



Under such circumstances, would the Inter- 

 national Committee decide that the pirated 

 descriptions and false names should be adopted 

 in place of those of the real author? 



It would be a delicate matter, perhaps, for 

 colleagues to place before the committee re- 

 quisite evidence in such a case, if recent; but 

 if it were done, what would be the decision? 

 Evidently under the rigid rules of priority, 

 the names given by B. would be upheld, and 

 later on A. would be wrongly accused of cop,y- 

 ing from B. and changing his names! 



Such things have happened more than once, 

 as many zoologists know. Again, suppose that 

 Professor X. is monographing a large collec- 

 tion, say of insects, in his laboratory, to which 

 his assistants and students have access, as is 

 usually the case, and that one of the young 

 men, Mr. Y., looks over his notes, lists or 

 preliminary labels, and then publishes, with- 

 out permission,, the new names of genera and 

 species in some unimportant local list of his 

 own, without descriptions or figures, merely 

 saying that " Professor X., in his forthcoming 

 work, is going to describe such and such 

 genera, with this and that species as types " ; 

 and suppose, further, that when Professor X. 

 does publish his work he does not recognize 

 the previous work, and uses entirely different 

 types for the same generic names. Whose 



