814 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. i 



symbols. That is the whole of it. No plan 

 for solving zoological problems by rule is pro- 

 posed; only a plan for conserving time and 

 energy, offered in the belief that the purely 

 clerical work of biological science might be 

 accomplished with less waste. The simpler 

 system would stand in the same relation to 

 the existing system as that in which the Lin- 

 nsean names have stood to the long descriptive 

 phrases that preceded them. 



To be sure, this plan, which allows choice of 

 names (one out of a score more or less in 

 every group), does not necessitate that the 

 oldest one shall be forced into general use in 

 the new system : rather, it leaves the selection 

 to those most competent, most interested and 

 most responsible for the future in each group. 

 This feature may hold the derogation of 

 democracy to which Dr. Jordan refers, but if 

 so, I do not understand what sort of a democ- 

 racy systematic zoology is considered to be. 

 Is a law of priority its only possible standard 

 of equality? I profess to be a democrat, and, 

 in a very small way, a systematist; yet I con- 

 fess I never heard of anything like this. May 

 not this democracy abide the recognition of 

 merit? Is it already irrevocably bound up 

 with a statute of nomenclatural primogeni- 

 ture? Does the determination of priority in 

 and of itseK necessitate that all good demo- 

 crats must acclaim the restoration of lost 

 names to the places they once transiently 

 occupied in spite of all that may have hap- 

 pened in the intervening years? 



I have myself long pursued priority in the 

 hope of names that would be both stable and 

 usable. I have even advocated the forcing 

 of prior forgotten names back into general 

 nomenclature. I did so as long as mere tem- 

 porary convenience seemed at stake. I did so 

 while names doubled in length, trebled in ab- 

 surdity and quadrupled in number. I did so 

 until family names began to fall and to be 

 set up again in exchanged places. I did so 

 until I became unable to read the literature in 

 several groups of which I had once been a 

 student, or to converse with modern students 

 of those groups. I did so until it became well 

 nigh impossible for me to give to my classes 



intelligible references to the literature they 

 most needed to consult in their work.^ And 



^ Recently, while providing tables for the work 

 of a small class in limnology, I encountered the 

 following situation in aquatic diptera. Half of 

 the names of dipterous families containing aquatic 

 larvEe have been victims of the rule of priority. 

 Here are the names of the families of our fauna, 

 as found in all the text-books, manuals, mono- 

 graphs and general reference books. 

 Psychodida3 * Leptidffi 



* Ptychopteridce Empididse 

 Tipulidae x * StratiomyiidEe 



X * Blepharoceridae Syrphidffi 



Dixidae * Borboridaa 



* Chironomidffi Ephydridse 

 Culicidse x * CordyluridsB or 



* Simuliidaa * Seatophagidas 

 Tabanidse Seiomyzidse 



Only those unmarked in the list remain unchanged. 

 Of the others, three (marked x) have been changed 

 in spelling only, return to an incorrect or in- 

 elegant form being required in this line of prog- 

 ress. One of these names, Cordyluridse, is in less 

 common use than ScatophagidEe, but Scatophaga 

 also falls. In addition to this, the well-known 

 names Syrphi^s and Sciomyza have been shifted 

 to designate new groups of species in their re- 

 spective families. So, also, has Corethra within 

 its subfamily. All these familiar groups will now 

 bear unfamiliar names. 



Now, perhaps, a better democrat than I would 

 have adopted all these changes willingly and pur- 

 sued priority to the bitter end. But I did not. 

 I wished my class to use the literature that has 

 grown up about the names Corethra, Chironomus, 

 Simulium, Eristalis, etc., names that are the sub- 

 jects of books, of memoirs and of classic investi- 

 gations in many fields of biology, and that have 

 nowhere any uncertain meaning. As a teacher I 

 could not afford the time and effort necessary to 

 explain to rational young people why the ' ' inter- 

 ests of taxonomy ' ' require that Corethra or Syr- 

 phus be removed from their accustomed places after 

 one hundred years, and used to designate entirely 

 different groups of flies. In fact, I can not ex- 

 plain this; nor why, if the zoologists of the world 

 have been able to agree on a law of priority, they 

 might not yet be able to agree upon something 

 less distressing. 



Any one who speaks of this as a matter of 

 temporary inconvenience surely is thinking in 

 terms of geologic time. 



