CONSTRUCTION OF SYSTEMATIC NAMES IN PAL^ONTOLGY. xv 



inelegancies already, and as the stern law of priority forbids their removal, it follows that 

 they must remain as monuments of the bad taste or bad scholarship of their authors to 

 the latest ages in which zoology shall be studied. 



Etymologies and types of new genera to be stated. — It is obvious that the names of genera 

 would, in general, be far more carefully constructed, and their definitions would be 

 rendered more exact, if authors would adopt the following suggestion: 



It is recommended that in defining new genera, the etymology of the name should 

 be always stated, and that one species should be invariably selected as a type or standard 

 of reference. 



The following extract, from the same code, also bears on the point 

 in question: 



Nonsense names. — Some authors having found difficulty in selecting 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: Virahia, 

 Xema, Azeca, Assiminia, Qaedius, SpisiUa. To the same class we may refer anagrams of 

 other generic names, Dacko and Cedola of Alcedo, Zapomia of Dorzana, etc. Such verbal 

 trifling as this is in very bad taste, and is especially calculated to bring the science into 

 contempt. It finds no precedent in the Augustan age of Latin, but can be compared 

 only to the puerile quibblings of the Middle Ages. It is contrary to the genius of all 

 languages, which appear never to produce new words by spontaneous generation, but 

 always to derive them from some other source, however distant or obscure. And it is 

 peculiarly annoying to the etymologist, who, after seeking in vain through the vast store- 

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

 been pursuing an ignis fatuus. 



Besides having often to follow such will-o'-the-wisps, any student 

 who undertakes the task, will soon find it no easy one to ferret out the 

 origin and meaning of veritable scientific names, often made up without 

 distinct allusion to any conspicuous character of the fossil in question, and, 

 occasionally, by men whose acquaintance with the languages is of the 

 slightest kind. After all, care and pains, not a few malformed words and 

 barbarous terms too long current to be now withdrawn from circulation, 

 must ever remain, as corresponding words survive in our common English 

 tongue ; marking some age of folly or ignorance in by-gone days of the 

 language. Such terms will serve as memorials, fossil relics, to show to 

 future times the freaks of linguistic development in the early days of 

 Palaeontology. 



