October 23, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



599 



sometimes he named the group after the 

 principal genus {e. g., Percidia). The sub- 

 family is now generally recognized, and its 

 ending rendered by -ince, or more seldom 

 ini or ina. This is rather a termination for 

 Latin adjectives involving the idea of re- 

 lation or pertinence, 

 yo?^ / But, as been already urged, the language 

 of nomenclature should not be bound by 

 rules of strict philology. One of the most 

 useful devices of scientific terminology is 

 the establishment of terminations which 

 indicate the nature or value of a group or 

 relation to the group to which some entity 

 belongs. 



The chemist has his terminajtions in -ates, 

 -ides and -geyis, and does not deem it in- 

 cumbent to defend his usage or to abandon 

 his system, because some one might object 

 to the want of classical models. Nay, clas- 

 sical scholars themselves have recognized 

 the legitimacy and usefulness of such a 

 method. 



The ending -idee has been shown to have 

 classical sanction for both Greek and Latin ; 

 -ince has only classical sanction for Latin 

 words, and there is one — -oidea for 

 which no models are to be found in 

 either language. But the convenience of 

 all those endings as indicative at once of 

 the taxonomic value of each group far out- 

 weighs any objection to them from the 

 philological side. We are now confronted 

 with the groups having the -oidea ending. 



SUPEEPAMILY. 



Experience has shown that for the exhi- 

 bition of diiference in value of various 

 groups and characters, more than the gen- 

 erally accepted groups — families and sub- 

 families — are desirable. Groups above the 

 family, in the generality of their characters, 

 had been frequentlj'- adopted. A quarter 

 century ago I searched for an available 

 name and notation for such a group, and 

 found that the groups which I wished to 



recognize were most like those that Dana 

 had recognized in the Crustaceans, under 

 the name of subtribe, and given the ending 

 -oidea. But the term ' tribe ' had first been 

 given and most generally used for a subdi- 

 vision of the family, and consequently was 

 ineligible for a group including the family. 

 Other names had been given to such groups, 

 but there were objections against them. In 

 a communication to the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science (Vol- 

 ume XX.) I used a new name — super- 

 family — and the termination -oidea. The 

 great advantage of the name was that it 

 relieved the memory, and suggested at once 

 what was meant by relation to a familiar 

 standard — family. The term has been quite 

 generally adopted, but there has been di- 

 versity of usage in the form of the names, 

 -oidece being frequently suffixed to the stem, 

 and sometimes a descriptive name has been 

 given. The only reason for the ending 

 -oidea is that it was first used in such con- 

 nection ; -oidece, has the advantage (or dis- 

 advantage?) that it is in consonance with 

 -idee and -ince. ISTo provision has been made 

 by the German Zoological Society for this 

 category, their attention having been con- 

 fined to family and subfamily nomen- 

 clature.* 



OTHER GROUPS 



Time does not permit of the consideration 

 of the other groups — order, suborder, class, 

 subclass, superclass, branch, etc. Never- 

 theless, a caveat is in order that there ap- 

 pears to be no reason why the principle of 

 priority now so generally recognized for 

 the subordinate groups should not prevail 



*"Die Nam en von Familien und Unterfamilien 

 werden fortan von deni giiltigen Namen einer zu 

 diesen Gruppen gehorigen Gattung Gebildet, und 

 zwar die der Familien durch Anhangen der Endung 

 idae (Plural von ides [gr. £M;;f] masc. gen.), die der 

 Unterfamilien durch Anhangen der Endung inee 

 (fern, gen.) an den Stamm des betreffenden Gat- 

 tungsnamens. " Regeln . . . von der Deutsch. Zool. 

 Ges., I 28. 



