October 23, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



595 



different names have been given to repre- 

 sentatives or stages of what are now con- 

 sidered the same genus. For example, 

 Lacepede, in the third volume of his ' His- 

 toire IsTaturelle des Poissons/ published two 

 names, Cephalacajithus and Dactylopterus, the 

 former given to the young and the latter to 

 the adult stage of the flying gurnard. Ceph- 

 alacanthus appeared on page 323, and 

 Dactylopterus on page 325. Dactylopterus is 

 the name that has been generallj^ adopted 

 for the genus, but some excellent natural- 

 ists now insist on the resurrection and re- 

 tention of Cephalacanthus, for the reason 

 that the latter was the first given name. 

 In connection with an analogous case, it 

 was urged that ' the law of primogeniture 

 applies to twins.' There is a fallacy in- 

 volved in such a comparison, which be- 

 comes obvious enough on consideration. 

 In the case of twins, the birth of one pre- 

 cedes that of the other by a very appreci- 

 able interval of time. But in the case of 

 names appearing in the same volume (is- 

 sued as a whole) the publication is neces- 

 sarily simultaneous. It is therefore, it ap- 

 pears to me, perfectly logical to take the 

 most appropriate name, or to follow the 

 zoologist who first selected one of the 

 names. In the case of Dactylopterus, there 

 would be the further advantage that the cur- 

 rent nomenclature would not be disturbed. 

 It is interesting to note that those who 

 have acted on the principle just condemned 

 do not feel called upon to accept the first 

 species of a genus as its type. 



MAJOR GROUPS AND THEIR NOMENCLATURE. 



Another subject to which I would invite 

 your attention is the amount of subdivision 

 of the animal kingdom which is expedient, 

 and the nomenclature of such subdivisions. 



Linnaeus only admitted four categories — 

 class, order, genus and species. These suf- 

 ficed for most naturalists during the entire 

 past century. Only one naturalist-^Gott- 



lieb Conrad Christian Storr — went into 

 much greater detail ; he admitted as many 

 as eleven categories, which may be roughly 

 compared with modern groups as follows : 



These groups are really not exactly com- 

 parable with any of recent systematists, 

 inasmuch as Storr proceeded from a physio- 

 logical instead of a morphological base in 

 his classification. The only work in which 

 this classification was exhibited was in his 

 'Prodromus Methodi Mammalium,' pub- 

 lished in 1780. 



"With this exception, the naturalists of 

 the last century practically recognized only 

 four categories — species, genera, orders and 

 classes. Families were introduced into the 

 system by Latreille. The word 'family,' 

 it is true, was not unknown previously, but 

 it had been used only as a synonym for 

 order. In botany such usage even prevails, 

 to some extent, at the present day, and per- 

 sists as a heritage of the past. The French 

 botanists used ' famille ' as the equivalent 

 of ' ordo.' Our English and American 

 botanists followed and used ' order ' as the 

 more scientific designation, and ' family ' as 

 a popular one; Gray, for example, calling 

 the family represented by the buttercups 

 the 'Order Eanunculacese,' or 'Crowfoot 

 Family.' But in zoology the two names 

 became early differentiated and, while 

 order was continued in use with the 

 approximate limits assigned to it by Lin- 

 naeus, family was interposed as a new cate- . 

 gory, intermediate between the order and 



