486 
terms which have never been used, as far as I 
am aware, even by the man who proposed 
them.’ This statement is not quite correct. 
‘The man who proposed them,’ myself, has 
already used them several times in print, oftener 
still in labeling and registering specimens, and 
has every intention of continuing the practice. 
Nor is he the only one who has done so. More- 
over, had none used them as yet, in print, four 
years is rather a short time in which to con- 
sider obsolete terms admittedly proposed only 
for occasional use. The clear expression by 
such words of the exact relations of the speci- 
mens under discussion to the original descrip- 
tion has been found of so much value by 
those who have used them that it is easy to 
sympathize with any one dealing with the 
classes of types that Mr. Schuchert refers to, 
wishing to have equally handy names by which 
to speak of them. 
Mr. Schuchert has proposed to alter the defi- 
nition of a paratype so that it should only apply 
to such specimens as are described or measured 
in the original description. This seems by no 
means an improvement, as the idea of a para- 
type is that it is one of the specimens whose 
examination induced the author to found a new 
species. In what way he worded his descrip- 
tion, which specimens he mentioned and which 
he did not, in no way affect this central idea. 
Moreover, it is just the more aberrant individ- 
uals, and the extremes in measurement, that 
would be likely to be mentioned, while those 
that are best and most representative as para- 
types would tend to be passed over in silence. 
Probably Mr. Schuchert’s ‘plastotype’ will 
be of use to paleontologists and others having 
occasion to deal with casts, but I fail to see the 
benefit of his terms hypotype and genotype, of 
which the former is too general to be of much 
definite use, while the latter is based on a con- 
fusion of ideas, as while the type of a species is 
a specimen, that of a genus is a species, so that 
no specimen can be typical of a genus. 
The objection to ‘hypotype’ as being too 
general and covering too many specimens of 
different origins applies even more strongly to 
Lord Walsingham and Mr. Durrant’s proposed 
extension* of metalype to cover any specimen 
* Merton Rules of Nomenclature, p. 13, 1896. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. VI. No. 143; 
named by the original author, whether topo- 
type or not. Many a museum worker, who 
has to name large series of specimens from all 
sorts of localities, must constantly put under one 
of his own names specimens which may be 
anything but typical, and it would be absurd to 
call the whole of a museum series of a common 
animal ‘metatypes’ merely because the name 
of the species happened to have been proposed 
by the person who determined the specimens. 
Probably this result of their proposal had not 
presented itself to the authors referred to. 
But after reducing ‘metatype’ to its original 
sense, Walsingham and Durrant’s term ‘ homo- 
type’ might suitably be employed for any 
specimens that had been compared with the 
type, such specimens being, I believe, looked 
upon by entomologists with a respect which, in 
view of the difficulty of a proper comparison, 
mammalogists find a little hard to understand. 
But, as in other cases, if entomologists find the 
word useful, by all means let them use it, and 
let not those who don’t want the word object 
to its use by those who do. 
Lastly, may I express my pleasure at the ad- 
vantage mammalogical nomenclature has gained 
by Mr. Palmer’s critique* on my recent arrange- 
ment of rodents. Every zoological paper now- 
adays has two sides, a real and a nomenclatural, 
and it so happens that the nomenclatural side 
of the paper discussed is particularly suscep- 
tible of improvement, partly owing to the fact 
that the prospect of the appearance of Mr. Pal- 
mer’s own list of mammalian genera made it 
obvious that any labor expended in this direc- 
tion would be largely wasted, and partly be- 
cause my own views of nomenclature under- 
went a radical change just as the paper was be- 
ing printed, so that some names could be altered 
in accordance with the newer views, and others 
not. 
To the omitted genus Fiber, Dasymys Peters} 
may be added, and may be placed at 43a, while 
Nectomys, also of the same author, should, as 
elsewhere pointed out, be restored to full rank, 
coming at 74a. It also proves that Chiruwromys 
Thos., should give way to Pogonomys M. Edw. 
*ScreNncgE, VI., p. 103, July 16, 1897. 
+ MB. AK. Berl., 1875, p. 12. 
