June 26, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



1015 



ica. At the present rate of publication, three 

 library bureau drawers would, fifty years 

 hence, be devoted to Bolivia. The 2,500 

 cards would not, however, be indiscriminately 

 arranged. One drawer would be devoted to 

 arthropods. The greater part of the drawer 

 would be filled with references to the insects, 

 readily recognizable by the appropriate sym- 

 bol of the decimal classification. A rather 

 large group of cards would follow the guide 

 card Coleoptera. Relatively smaller packets 

 would refer to the primary subdivisions of 

 the Coleoptera. I do not seriously believe 

 that a representative of the genus Carabus 

 will have appeared in Bolivia; but I trust that 

 the references to Felsche's species of Pinotus 

 will still meet the eye of the visitor of 1950 

 and that he will respect the self-sacrifice that 

 made the inauguration of the work possible. 



Multiple entry is the feature of the cata- 

 logue of new species as of the printed bibli- 

 ography. Thus, in the paleontological part, 

 there is not merely a division for dinosaurs, 

 there is also an exhaustive treatment of the 

 fossil fauna of Kansas gathered together 

 under the heading Kansas, and a reference 

 to all discoveries of Cretaceous animals under 

 the appropriate stratigraphic heading. 



Most of the work that we are here under- 

 taking has never been attempted before; but 

 our esperience has shown that, in such places 

 as our activity runs parallel to other record- 

 ing agencies, we find in the latter so numerous 

 omissions that the necessity of a more perfect 

 organization of the work is most apparent. 

 Even in regard to genera, a cursory compari- 

 son showed omissions aggregating a hundred 

 or more, while, in regard to species and sub- 

 species, we are sure that many hundred are 

 recorded in the catalogue of the Concilium 

 which are elsewhere quite overlooked. Omis- 

 sions, of course, occur in our lists, but, again, 

 we know just where the gaps lie and can make 

 them good as soon as we can obtain access 

 to each publication which we had not hitherto 

 been able to excerpt. 



The two years' experience has shown us, 

 furthermore, how impossible it is for the in- 

 dividual worker to avoid giving preoccupied 

 names. As soon as we detect such errors we 



inform the author and suggest a change. 

 Often the same name is chosen by two authors 

 within a few weeks of each other, so that the 

 entry in our record with date is highly im- 

 portant. In regard to genera the case is most 

 disturbing. How can an ornithologist de- 

 scribing a new genus of birds be sure that his 

 name has not been used by some paleontolo- 

 gist describing a fossil sponge ? No such uni- 

 versal knowledge of the literature can be ex- 

 pected of any worker. For this reason, the 

 Concilium is anxious to issue at frequent in- 

 tervals, perhaps yearly, with cumulative five- 

 year and twenty-five-year indexes, a cheap 

 concise list of genus names that have been 

 proposed. This work would supplement the 

 ' ISTomenclators ' of Agassiz, Marshall and 

 Scudder and the work recently published by 

 the Zoological Society of London. 



The following entry may serve to illustrate 

 the arrangement of the text of our record of 

 new species: 



57.98 Nesodynerus (96.9) 



obtabilis n. sp. 



Perkins 1901a. 



Entom. Monthly Mag. (2), Vol. 12, p. 267. 



57.98 is the group number for Vespidae, 

 (96.9) for Hawaii. A second entry is made 

 under (96.9) as primary division. 



2. Minor Notes. — Many local journals of 

 natural history, e. g.. Entomologist, Auh, etc., 

 publish, often in small print, numerous notes 

 on captures, isolated observations of habits, 

 records of trifling color variations and so 

 forth. Ever since the foundation of the Con- 

 cilium it has been a burning problem how to 

 deal with these notes. It is out of the ques- 

 tion to neglect them, for they may contain 

 changes of nomenclature which by the rule 

 of priority might become decisive of the 

 proper name of an animal. Thus we may 

 find new genera of fishes actually introduced 

 for the first time in the editorial talks on 

 recent literature appearing in the American 

 Naturalist! No form of publication can be 

 too trivial for a conscientious bibliographer, 

 so long as the law of absolute priority forms 

 the basis of our nomenclature. 



In regard to these minor notes, the bibli- 

 ographies in pamphlet form have a vast ad- 



