332 KEY. T. E. E. STEBBING ON 



that on this point I challenge the opinions of a friend, an 

 absentee, a lady. As a matter of fact, Miss Mary J. Rathbun, 

 of the National Museum in the United States of America, if 

 not the foremost living authority on the higher Crustacea, may 

 be held to have in this department of knowledge no living and 

 working superior, and probably no equal except in Major 

 Alcock, a Fellow of our own Society. It is this very pre- 

 eminence on her part that makes it a matter almost of urgency 

 that we should come to an early understanding on the rules of 

 nomenclature with a writer so accurate and copious, so full of 

 knowledge and. so deservedly influential as Miss Eathbun. 

 Already no little entanglement has been introduced into syno- 

 nymy by her acceptance of Latreille's Manual of the Arthro- 

 poda *, published in 1810, as a sort of bed-rock for generic 

 subdivision. This book gave a conspectus of genera, many of 

 them defined in the briefest and crudest manner, and concluded 

 with a list in which, as a rule, the name of each genus was 

 accompanied by that of a single species. In the view of 

 Miss Eathbun, this catalogue sealed the fate of all those genera 

 that were open to subdivision, although there was certainly 

 and obviously no intention on Latreille's part to subdivide 

 them. Supposing that he had intended to do so, is it to be 

 conceded that an author may select the type of another 

 man's genus without explaining why he selects it, or whether 

 he has any reason for considering the rest of the species 

 less typical than his chosen type ? This matter has been 

 argued elsewhere f. We may pass on to consider a still more 

 startling step in the same direction, announced in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Biological Society of Washington ' for December 

 1904. Therein Miss Kathbun explains that she has become 

 acquainted with Weber's ' Nomenclator entomologicus ' J, pub- 

 lished in 1795 ; that "under the Agonata or Crustacea, pp. 91-96, 

 many of the genera first described in J. C. Fabricius's ' Supple- 



* Considerations generales sur I'ordre iiaturel des animaux composant les 

 classes des Crustaces, des Arachnides, et des Insectes ; as^ec un tableau 

 methodique des leurs genres, disposes en families. Paris, 1810. 



t " The late lamented Latreille. A Study in Names." Natural Science, 

 vol. xii. p. 239 (1898). 



I Nomenclalor entomologicus, secundum Entomologiam systematicam 

 illustr. Fabricii, adjectis speciebus recens detectis et varietatibus conscriptus a 

 Triderico Weber Chiloniensi. Chilonii et Hamburgii, 1796. 



