271 

 THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE NAMES AZECA AND 

 ASSIMINEA OF LEACH. 



By the Rev. G. A. FRANK KNIGHT, M.A. 



(Read before the Society, September 13th, 1899). 



Enquiries have from time to time been made as to the derivation of 

 the names Azeca and Assiminea of Leach, but hitherto all such re- 

 searches have apparently been fruitless. The words still remain under 

 the ban pronounced upon them in 1842, when the Committee of the 

 British Association on the " Revision of Zoological and Botanical 

 Nomenclature" singled them out for condemnation as particularly 

 bad examples of merely " nonsense names." The report says (B. A. 

 Rep., 1842, p. 118) : "Some authors having found difficulty in select- 

 ing generic names which have not been used before, have adopted the 

 plan of coining words at random without any derivation or meaning 

 whatever. The following are examples — Viralva, Xema, Azeca, 

 Assiminea, Quedius, Spisula. It is particularly annoying to the ety- 

 mologist, who, after seeking in vain through the vast storehouses of 

 human language for the parentage of such words, discovers at last that 

 he has been pursuing an ignis fatims" Succeeding reports by the 

 same Committee in later years have not released these terms — Azeca 

 and Assiminea — from the cloud under which they rest. Scientific 

 workers may continue to employ them, as they have come to stay, and 

 to change them now would cause inconvenience, but there is a dis- 

 tinct slur attached to these names, and they are held up as solemn 

 warnings to all coiners of new terminology. 



I propose in this paper to examine whether the condemnation is 

 really just, and to enquire whether after all Leach may not have had 

 a praiseworthy and consistent plan which he followed out in the nam- 

 ing of his genera. 



Dr. William Elford Leach was born in 1790. In 1814 he started 

 the "Zoological Miscellany," a periodical which gave to the world 

 descriptions of many animals new and important to science. But in 

 182 1 he retired from active supervision of this work, and during the 

 closing years of his life he fixed his residence in Italy, and in that 

 country, at Tortona in Piedmont, he passed away in 1836. The book 

 by which he is remembered is his "Synopsis of the Mollusca of Great 

 Britain," which was issued in 1852, long after his death, by Dr. J. E. 

 Gray. Part of the work (p. 1-116) had, however, neen in type and 

 several copies had been circulated since 1820, and hence Leach's 

 names are entitled to the benefit of the 'law of priority.' The treatise 

 is dedicated to three distinguished foreign scientists — Jules-Cesar 

 Savigny, Baron G. D. Cuvier, and Jos. Xav. Poli. There are two 



