588 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 95. 



otliers he was extremely lax. It is due to 

 him (directly or indirectly) that our lists 

 of genera of vertebrate animals especially 

 are encumbered with so many ancient 

 names that we know were applied to very 

 different animals by the Greeks and 

 Eomans. It is Linnaeus that was directly 

 responsible for the misuse of such generic 

 names of mammals as Lemur, Manis, Dasy- 

 pus ; such bird-names as Irochiliis, Coracias, 

 Phaeton, Diomedea, Meleagris and (partly 

 with Artedi) such fish-names as Chimera, 

 Centriscus, Pegasus, Callionymus, Trigla, Amia, 

 Teuthis, Esox, Elops, Mormyrus and Exocoetus. 

 These all were applied by the ancients, to 

 forms most of which are now well ascer- 

 tained, and the animals to which they have 

 been transferred have nothing in common 

 with the original possessors of the names. 



The misuse of these ancient names is in 

 contravention of the rule adopted by the 

 International Zoological Congress held in 

 Moscow (1892), that "every foreign word 

 employed as a generic or specific name 

 should retain the meaning it has in the lan- 

 guage from which it is taken," and of like 

 rules of other associations. The false ap- 

 plication by Linnaeus and his followers (and 

 he had many) was due partly to the belief 

 that the ancient names were unidentifiable, 

 but now there are few whose original perti- 

 nence is not known. It may be thought 

 by some, however, that we are unduly criti- 

 cising the doings of the past from the van- 

 tage-ground of the present. But such is 

 not the case, for at the commencement of 

 his career Linnseus was taken to task for 

 the fault indicated. Some of those criti- 

 cisms were so apt that they may be advan- . 

 tageously repeated here. 



Dillenius, of Oxford, wrote to Linnaeus in 

 August, 1737, in these terms : 



" We all know the nomenclature of Botany to be 

 an Augean stable, which C. Hoffmann, and even Ges- 

 ner, were not able to cleanse. The task requires 

 much reading, and extensive as well as various erudi- 



tion; nor is it to be given up to hasty or careless 

 hands. You rush upon it, and overturn everything. 

 I do not object to Greek words, especially in compound 

 names ; but I think the names of the antients ought 

 not rashly and promiscuously to be transferred to our 

 new genera, or those of the New World. The day 

 may possibly come when the plants of Theophrastus 

 and Dioscorides may be ascertained ; and, till this 

 happens, we had better leave their names as we find 

 them. That desirable end might even now be at- 

 tained if any one would visit the countries of these 

 old botanists, and make a sufiicient stay there ; for 

 the inhabitants of those regions are very retentive of 

 names and customs, and know plants at this moment 

 by their ancient appellations, very little altered, as 

 any person who reads Bellonius may perceive. I re- 

 member your being told, by the late Mr. G. Gherard, 

 that the modern Greeks give the name of Amanita 

 {dfiavlra) to the eatable Field Mushroom ; and yet, in 

 Critica Botanica, p. 50, you suppose that word to be 

 French. Who will ever believe the Thya of Theo- 

 phrastus to be our Arior Vitse ? Why do you give the 

 name of Cactus to the Ttma ? Do you believe the 

 Tuna, or Melocactus (pardon the word), and the Arior 

 Vitse, were known to Theophrastus? An attentive 

 reader of the description Theophrastus gives of his 

 Sida, will probably agree with me that it belongs ta 

 our NymphspM, and indeed to the white-flowered kind. 

 You, without any reason, give that name to the 3Ial- 

 vinda ; and so in various other instances concerning 

 antient names, in which I do not, like Burmann, 

 blame you for introducing new names, but for the bad 

 application of old ones. If there were, in these cases, 

 any resemblance between your plants and those of the 

 antients, you might be excused, but there is not. 

 Why do you, p. 68, derive the word Medica from the 

 virtues of the plant, when Pliny, bookxviii!, chap. 16, 

 declares it to have been brought from Media ? Why 

 do you call the 3Iolucca, Molucella ?■ It does not, nor 

 ought it, to owe that name, as is commonly thought, 

 to the Molucca islands ; for, as Lobel informs us, the 

 name and the plant are of Asiatic origin. Why then 

 do you adopt a barbarous name, and make it more 

 barbarous ? Biscutella is not, as you declare, p. 118, 

 a new name, having already been used by Lobel. I 

 am surprised that you do not give the etymology of 

 the new names which you or others have introduced. 

 I wish you would help me to the derivation of some 

 that I cannot trace; as Ipomsea, for instance. Why 

 are you so offended with some words, which you de- 

 nominate barbarous, though many of them are more 

 harmonious than others of Greek or Latin origin?" 



A year later (August 28, 1738) he again 

 wrote : 



