270 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 87. 



opposition of a few members of the House of 

 Commons who wish to introduce a Church of 

 England ' Test ' for the professorships in Kings 

 College. 



Col. W. C. Breckinridge, of San Antonio, 

 has given $30,000 to the University of Texas 

 to be used for a dormitory and confectory for 

 the women students of the medical department. 



Dr. a. C. Abbott has been appointed to suc- 

 ceed Dr. Billings, who has resigned the chair of 

 hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania. 



Dr. Edwin F. Northrup, of Syracuse, N. 

 y., has been elected associate professor of 

 physics in the University of Texas. Dr. North- 

 rup is a graduate of Amherst College, was later 

 a graduate student at Cornell University, and 

 a fellow for two years at Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity. 



Mr. B. M. Duggar has been appointed as- 

 sistant in cryptogamic botany in Cornell Uni- 

 versity. 



Prof. Thompson has resigned from the chair 

 of ophthalmology in Jefferson Medical College 

 and will be succeeded by Dr. de Schweinitz. 



Dr. Burney Yeo has been appointed by the 

 Council of King's College professor of the prin- 

 ciples and practice of medicine in succession to 

 Dr. Lionel Beale, and Dr. John Curnow has 

 been appointed to the chair of clinical medicine 

 in succession to the late Sir George Johnson. 



Dr. C. v. Ehrenfels, of Munich, has been 

 appointed assistant professor of philosophy in 

 the University of Prague, and Prof. R. Anschiitz, 

 of Bonn, has been appointed acting director of 

 the Chemical Institute of the University. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 

 A PROTEST AGAINST QUADRINOMIALISM. 



In the present days when systematists are 

 continually confronted with puzzles in nomen- 

 clature, which owe their origin mainly to the 

 inadequate descriptions and careless methods 

 of the older naturalists, it seems of the greatest 

 importance for us to consider carefully any new 

 practices that may be proposed by writers of to- 

 day, and to call attention to their good or bad 

 points before they are adopted by others. 



A case in point will be found in papers by Dr. 



C. Hart Merriam, in 'North American Fauna,' 

 Nos. 10 and 11. This is practically the propo- 

 sition to introduce ' quadrinomials ' into our 

 nomenclature. Trinomialism, the use of ' sub- 

 species,' has of late years become almost uni- 

 versal among zoologists in this country, and its 

 advantages are well known. Dr. Merriam has 

 always been a strong advocate of trinomialism, 

 but in the papers just referred to he goes a step 

 further and describes ' subspecies ' of ' sub- 

 species,' which is practically quadrinomialism, 

 though he so writes the names as to use only 

 three words. 



For instance, Blarina brevicauda, is the com- 

 mon short-tailed shrew of the northeastern 

 States. In the Southern States it merges into a 

 smaller subspecies known as Blarina brevicauda 

 carolinensis. In tropical Florida still another 

 subspecies is found which Dr. Merriam names 

 peninsulse. This, according to our established 

 usage would stand as Blarina brevicauda penin- 

 sulse, but Dr. Merriam writes it Blarina caro- 

 linensis peninsulse (N. A. Fauna, No. 10, p. 14), 



It will be noticed that carolinensis is thus 

 treated as the ' species ' of which peninsulse is 

 made a subspecies, while on the preceding page 

 carolinensis is itself treated as a subspecies of 

 brevicauda. 



In other words, the author prefers to unite in 

 the trinomial name the two forms which are 

 geographically contiguous and to omit the fourth 

 name, brevicauda, for the sake of brevity. This 

 is of course nothing more nor less than quad- 

 rinomialism. 



There is no doubt but that quadrinomials or 

 any form of polynomials may be employed under 

 the same rules that now govern us in the use of 

 binomials and trinomials, but the question 

 arises, are they desirable or useful ? Decidedly 

 not. Trinomials serve a useful purpose in the 

 designation of geographical races, which while 

 quite distinct in their extremes are connected by 

 a perfect series of intergrades. No other satis- 

 factory method of designation has ever been 

 suggested for these. But here let us draw the 

 line. We cannot express the whole relation- 

 ship of a species in its name, and if we could 

 the name would become useless as such ; and 

 when it comes to dropping out a portion of it 

 we only tend to confusion. Do we not lose 



