Mabch 10, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



371 



depend for their existence on exactness in 

 nomenclature. Besides this, it often happens 

 that a publication in one nation may be un- 

 known in another, that different writers reach 

 the same results almost simultaneously and 

 independently, and still worse, that some 

 writers are careless or ignorant of the litera- 

 ture, or have felt free to improve on the work 

 of their predecessors by changing, not their 

 conceptions, but the names they have given. 



This condition in which anybody called any 

 animal or plant what he pleased went on for 

 more than eighty years after the publication 

 of the " Systema Naturse." It was evident 

 that all exactness in nomenclature was being 

 lost and that the only way out was through 

 the law of priority and through considering 

 systematic zoology as a democracy in which 

 there was no respecting of persons. Since the 

 first attempt at the recognition of the law of 

 priority in nomenclature, we have come by de- 

 grees to relative stability. So far as the first 

 name given to species or a genus was con- 

 cerned, this name, unless already in use, is 

 right. All the others are wrong. To those 

 who regard rules, the number of names 

 doubtful from the standpoint of nomenclature 

 is now but a very small proportion of the total 

 number. Those zoologically doubtful are nat- 

 urally far more numerous. 



The many zoological problems involved 

 must be settled by observation of the facts in 

 nature, not by rule. There is scarcely a species 

 of which we finally and completely know the 

 actual boundaries. The value and limitation 

 of generic groups changes with every in- 

 crease of knowledge. Forms once placed side 

 by side are shown to belong far apart. Those 

 far apart are often brought together. In this 

 regard, there can be no stability until the facts 

 are all in. A nomenclature absolutely stable 

 would represent intellectual stagnation. 



But to the systematic worker in any field, 

 the actual changes bring no great inconve- 

 nience. Names are nothing without ideas. 

 His difficulties do not lie in the remembering 

 of names, but in getting the facts to which 

 names are the handles. The postman is not 

 worried over the fact that each town has a 



name, and that it belongs to some county, and 

 that there are many counties in many states. 

 If he has troubles, it is not because there are 

 so many names, but because there are so 

 many towns and so many people to be named. 

 So with the taxonomist in any field. 



To the worker in other lines in biology, who 

 asks of taxonomy nothing save the name of 

 the animal he is working on, all suspense is 

 aggravating. He wants the scientific name 

 once for all, and he doesn't want it changed. 

 We are sorry that we can not accommodate 

 him, but a name as such is not the main ques- 

 tion with the taxonomist. We may let the 

 anatomist keep for his own purposes such 

 names as Amphioxus, although the taxonomist 

 can not use it, because the group had a name 

 before Amphioxus was invented. The anat- 

 omist may in time get used to Branchiostoma 

 .iust as he has become reconciled to Necturus, 

 in place of the much later Menohranchus once 

 sacred to his purposes. 



The fact that a name seems to be in com- 

 mon use just now is no argument for its 

 permanence. The next generation realizing 

 more and more the value of law and order, 

 will discard the name that should not legiti- 

 mately be used. It is just as necessary in tax- 

 onomy and in zoogeography to have a clear-cut 

 nomenclature — above all whim or personal 

 preference — as it is in anatomy to have clean 

 knives, or in histology to have trustworthy 

 staining fluids. 



As to the substitution of numbers for spe- 

 cific names or their use in place of such names, 

 we have first the minor objection, of inac- 

 curacy. There will be a dozen errors in a col- 

 umn of figures to one in a column of names, 

 because with the numerals the memory has 

 nothing to hold to. If you live at No. 163 

 West 135th St. half your letters will be mis- 

 directed. This can be easily tested. The 

 dead-letter office is sending back to me letters 

 I directed to 916 East 19th St., and to 919 

 East 14th St., which should have gone to 914 

 East 19th, and I have now to write these fig- 

 ures twice to be sure that they are right. No. 

 256 Knickerbocker Avenue does not have this 

 trouble. Besides, misprints in names correct 



