692 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. YOL. IV. No. 97. 



date of publication. Hence the long accepted 

 date of some well-known work is liable at any 

 time to be overthrown and some later or earlier 

 date established as the real and proper date of 

 publication, leading, of course, to great incon- 

 venience and often to the overthrow of long 

 accepted names.* 



In view of the general unanimity of action on 

 the part of naturalists on this question, it is a 

 matter of surprise and deep regret that the Zo- 

 ological Section of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science should have 

 recently adopted a set of resolutions wholly at 

 variance with not only the concensus of opinion 

 concerning 'the date of publication,' but with 

 common sense ; the only redeeming feature be- 

 ing the fact that they will fall harmlessly in 

 consequence of their obvious absurdity. These 

 resolutions were adopted at the Springfield 

 meeting, held in August, 1895, and appear in 

 the recently issued volume of the ' Proceedings ' 

 of the Association for that meeting (p. 159). f 

 The whole pith of the resolutions is that ' the 

 date of publication of books is the date at which 

 they are printed,' This is the phraseology 

 adopted in the second ^ whereas,^ while the re- 

 solution covering this point is, in full, as follows: 



" Eesolved: First — The Section of Zoology of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 recommends that the date of the completion of print- 

 ing of a single issue be regarded as the date of publi- 

 cation. 



' ' Second — That the Section recommends that such 

 date be printed on the last signature of all publica- 

 tions, "whether books, periodicals or ' separates.' " 



The reasons given in support of this resolu" 

 tion show a surprising lack of familiarity with 

 the subject in hand on the part of the framers 

 of these resolutions; and it is not a little remark- 

 able that they should have been adopted in such 



*A case in point is the 'Proceedings' of the Lon- 

 don Zoological Society, some parts of the earlier 

 volumes being dated from three months to two years 

 and a-half in advance of their delivery by the printer 

 to the Society. Cf. Sclater (P. L.), Proc. Zool. Soc. 

 London, 1895, pp. 435-440. 



fThey appear to have been first printed in this Jour- 

 nal for October 11, 1895 (N. S. Vol. II., pp. 477-8), 

 and have been recently reprinted vrith editorial com- 

 mendation in the American Naturalist (August, 

 1896, pp. 651, 652). 



a body 'with but one pertinent objection,' as 

 the editor of the American Naturalist states. The 

 gist of the argument in favor of the above quoted 

 resolution is given under the final ^ whereas,^ as 

 follows : ' ' The determination of the date of 

 printing will generally depend on the records 

 of the printing office and the testimony of sev- 

 eral persons, while the time of mailing will be 

 known generally to but one person;" or, as said 

 just previously, ' ' the actual date of mailing will 

 be often impossible to ascertain with precision, 

 owing to lack of record and irregularity in the 

 period of transmission. ' ' 



While these allegations may be true, they 

 have really no bearing on the question at issue, 

 namely, the date of publication, as commonly 

 understood. 



The absurdity and mischievousness of this 

 ruling may be easily illustrated. The U. S. Na- 

 tional Museum has within the last few months 

 distributed two ' Special Bulletins ' bearing date 

 1895. These important quarto publications 

 were printed in 1895; in one case the printing 

 was completed six or eight months, and in the 

 other nearly or quite a year, before any copies 

 were distributed, or before these works were 

 ' published. ' In one of these a new genus ot 

 fishes was described, under a name which be- 

 fore the work was published was also given to 

 a genus of birds. The paper in which the bird ge- 

 nus was described and named is dated and was 

 distributed June, 1896, while no copies of the 

 work in which the fish genus was described were 

 distributed before August, 1896, as I am in- 

 formed by one of the authors of the latter work. 

 According to current usage, the generic name 

 in question must stand for the bird genus, and 

 the fish genus must be renamed. According to 

 the ' resolutions ' of the Zoological Section of 

 the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, the name must stand for the fish ge- 

 nus and the bird genus be renamed. This is 

 only one out of many parallel instances that 

 might be cited. 



When, as often happens, a work appears 

 from the Government Printing Ofiice months or 

 even years after it was printed and dated, it is 

 obviously absurd to claim, when the facts in 

 the case are known, that the work was pub- 

 lished at the date borne on the title page, if it 



