SOME QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE. 481 



But, as has been already urged, the language of nomenclature should 

 not be bound by rules of strict philology. One of the most useful devices 

 of scientific terminology is the establishment of terminations which 

 indicate the nature or value of a group, or relation to the group to 

 which some entity belongs. 



The chemist has his terminations in -ates, -ides, and -gens, and does 

 not deem it incumbent to defend his usage or to abandon his system 

 because some one might object to the want of classical models. Nay, 

 classical scholars themselves have recognized the legitimacy and 

 usefulness of such a method. 



The ending -idee has been shown to have classical sanction for both 

 Greek and Latin ; -ince has only classical sanction for Latin words, and 

 there is one, -oidea, for which no models are to be found in either lan- 

 guage. But the convenience of all those endings, as indicative at once 

 of the taxonomic value of each group, far outweighs any objection to 

 them from the philological side. We are now confronted with the 

 groups having the -oidea ending. 



SUPERFAMILY. 



Experience has shown that for the exhibition of difference in value 

 of various groups aud characters, more than the generally accepted 

 groups — families and subfamilies — are desirable. Groups above the 

 family, in the generality of their characters, had been frequently adopted. 

 A quarter century ago I searched for an available name and notation for 

 such a group, and found that the groups which I wished to recognize 

 were most like those that Dana had recognized in the Ciustaceans, 

 under the name of subtribe, and given the ending -oidea. But the 

 term "tribe" had first been given and most generally used for a sub- 

 division of the family, and consequently was ineligible for a group 

 including a family. Other names had been given to such groups, but 

 there were objections against them. In a communication to the Amer- 

 ican Association for the Advancement of Science (Volume XX) I used 

 a new name — superfamily — and the termination -oidea. The great 

 advantage of the name was that it relieved the memory, and suggested 

 at once what was meant by relation to a familiar standard — family. 

 The term has been quite generally adopted, but there has been diversity 

 of usage in the form of the names, -oidece being frequently suffixed to 

 the stem, and sometimes a descriptive name has been given. The only 

 reason for the ending -oidea is that it was first used in such connection ; 

 -oidece has the advantage (or disadvantage 1 ?) that it is in consonance 

 with -idee and -ince. No provision has been made by the German Zoolog- 

 ical Society for this category, their attention having been confined to 

 family and subfamily nomenclature. 1 



1 "Die Nainen von Familien unci Unterfaniilien werden fortan von dem giiltigen 

 Nainen einer zu clieseu Gruppen gehorigen Gattung gebildet, und zwar die der Fam- 

 ilien durcli Anhangen der Endung idw (Plural von ides [gr. ei'd^s] masc. gen.), die 

 der Unterfaniilien durch Anhangen der Endung ince (fern, gen.) an den Stamni des 

 betreffenden Gattungsnaniens." Regeln . . . von der Deutsch. Zool. Ges., § 28. 

 SM 96 31 



