October 8, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



493 



tieal advantages and conveniences of the Linnsean 

 system.^ 



The author of the third article cited above 

 places great stress upon the fact that " It is by 

 genera that animals and plants are catalogued," 

 and considers that " this whole discussion 

 hangs on the question, is it necessary to change 

 generic names to advance our knowledge?" 

 He goes on to reiterate: 



In conclusion, generic names are those by which 

 animals are catalogued, therefore should not be 

 changed without overwhelming evidence in favor 

 of the change. This value of the generic name has 

 not been sufficiently emphasized.^ 



These three writers (for they all harp essen- 

 tially on the same string) seem, despite all 

 their admissions, really to forget that increase 

 in knowledge leads in all fields of scientific 

 progress to the introduction of new technics. 

 It is not only necessary to learn new facts but 

 new terms for their expression. In the good 

 old days of the last half of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury and the early part of the nineteenth, 

 zoological genera were few; and when those 

 founded by the great Linnseus proved, in the 

 opinion of his immediate successors, to be in- 

 adequate to satisfactorily meet the require- 

 ments of their new discoveries, they proposed 

 what were in fact new generic groups, but in 

 deference to the past apologized for their seem- 

 ing disrespect of the status quo and demurely 

 called them subgenera, to break the shock of 

 their seeming irreverence. Yet as years passed 

 these groups gradually took their place in the 

 systems as valid genera, and more were con- 

 stantly added. The old Linnsan genus Miis 

 included at first marmots and flying squirrels, 

 as well as all the rat- and mouse-like animals 

 then known. All known deer and antelope 

 were each included in a single genus, and so 

 on through many other groups. 



More than one eighteenth century genus has 

 since been distributed into several families, to 

 say nothing of genera. And what an incon- 

 venience this must have been for the " general 

 zoologist " to have to learn so many new gen- 

 eric names ! What a trouble it must have been 

 too for the cataloguer ! But such is the history 



6 Hid., p. 187. 



T Colton, I. c, p. 308. 



of science, and who is to say when we have 

 genera enough, and how many shall be weeded 

 out as merely useless and confusing, and how 

 many more may be conserved as subgenera, 

 and thus save the present-day overworked 

 "general zoologist" and his fellow sufferers 

 from knowing that such divisions and names 

 have ever been proposed by the poor specialists 

 who were so misled in their researches as to 

 think them necessary. 



I must confess, however, that I share the 

 weaknesses of my class, the specialists, in be- 

 lieving that the primary function of nomen- 

 clature is to express the facts of classification, 

 not to conceal them. The old genus Sciurus, 

 in its early sense, comprised all squirrel-like 

 animals of all parts of the world. In its old 

 sense it would now comprise several hundred 

 species, all looking near enough alike to be 

 called squirrels, yet containing a score or more 

 natural groups, sharply defined geographically 

 and by minor but not unimportant morpholog- 

 ical characters. Many of these minor groups 

 are now currently given the rank of genera, 

 others stand as merely sections or subgenera. 

 Arranged thus in a monograph or in a syste- 

 matic catalogue their various degrees of rela- 

 tionship and their interrelationships might be 

 approximately expressed, but incidental refer- 

 ences to them under the single generic name 

 Sciurus places all on the same level, with no 

 clue as to whether they are closely or remotely 

 related, or to the kind of squirrel intended. If 

 on the other hand they are mentioned under 

 their modern group names the specialist knows, 

 and the general zoologist should know, exactly 

 their relationship to other squirrels, in other 

 words, what kind of a squirrel is indicated. 

 But this is apparently of no importance to ad- 

 vocates of " convenience " as the prime factor 

 in every matter relating to nomenclature. 



An intelligible compromise would be the use 

 of both the generic name (in the broad sense) 

 and the subgenerie name (in parenthesis) in in- 

 cidental references. But this would be intoler- 

 able in the general zoologist, as it would, in 

 the case of subspecies, involve in effect a 

 quadrinomial nomenclature, and a further de- 

 parture from the primitive binomial of the 



