1871.) 95 
science that they should be chosen; and this choice by accord, this ancient usage 
of entomologists, which has been always acted upon to the present time, is now 
attacked and condemned, and we are told we must use the “ prior”? name, and no 
longer be allowed to use the name that those who have gone before us exercising 
their reason have preferred ; is not this degrading to science ? 
M. Boisduval, commenting on the want of uniformity in English and Conti- 
nental nomenclature, confines his observations to cases where the insects were 
“already described under other names, and were well known by those names.’ In 
such cases there was of course no accord, and they were very proper cases for the 
“law” of priority to determine. 
Another point seems to have escaped the ‘‘resurrectionists:” if a name be 
sunk it follows that all dependent and derivative names ought to be sunk also. 
Dictea appears in a recent list under the name tremula ; what, then, shall we do 
with Dictewoides? If we changed it to tremuloides we should be met with the objec- 
tion that Dictwoides was the “prior” name,—an example of the inextricable con- 
fusion we shall create by the resurrection-reading of the “ law.’’* 
Again, Linnzeus himself, as Mr. Kirby states, repeatedly changed the names he 
had given—no matter his reasons for so doing,—possibly he considered the change a 
benefit to science; possibly as Linnzeus’ names, as he himself tells us, were “ trivial,’ 
the change was purely arbitrary; but he changed them when the names were 
trivial, and mattered little, for trivial names cannot injure science as they can per- 
petuate no “ error ;”’ but now that science has progressed, and names are, as arule, 
no longer trivial,? accord is not even to bealloweda choice. The “resurrectionists’’ 
will, of course, have to hold all Linnzeus’ later names as “ errors,’’—a conclusion 
certainly never contemplated by the great father of entomology. 
Mr. Kirby is again unfortunate where he says, “if the ‘law’ of priority were 
** rescinded no one would any longer take the trouble to identify any species he in- 
“tended to describe as new, and we should soon have twenty new names for every 
“ old name which otherwise would have been restored.” But no one has ever pro- 
posed that the law should be rescinded; Mr. Lewis’ observations extend only to 
cases where common consent has accepted a more modern name ; if there were twenty 
such names, where would the accord be? The “law” of priority would come into 
operation and decide the name, and the insect would go forth to the world in all 
the multitudinous modern books, and more multitudinous modern lists, under that 
name; if, then, it were discovered, after the lapse of an entomological ‘ epoch,’’ 
that the decision of the “law” of priority was in fact wrong, and that some ancient 
_ author, whose name few knew, had called the insect by a name which no one had 
ever heard, shall we be compelled to accept such obsolete name? and so multiply 
synonymy, by rendering it necessary to attach the known nameas a synonym of the 
prior unknown, in all our future works, until the present generation, and their nom- 
enclature with them, have passed into oblivion; or shall we not rather reply with 
* As, when a name is superseded, it must be superseded, not only in one list, but in all, the 
followers of ‘‘ Doubleday’s list” will have to teach their children that Notodonta Dictwoides was so 
called because it resembled an insect that never did exist, that it was placed in a genus that gave 
it attributes it did not possess, and that it belonged to a group that resembles a group they did not 
allow.—T. H. B. 
+ Staudinger ignores several modern instances of Trivial Nomenclature, and says that such 
cases ought to be treated as if the insect had never been named at all; but such an ‘‘ipse dixit,” 
without accord, is perfectly valueless, as different entomologists may hold different opinions on 
what constitutes the difference between a scientific and a nonsense name,—Satyrus imbecile is a 
nonsense name, Mithymna imbecilla purely scientific !!!--T. H. B. 
