354i CLASSIFICATION OF REPTILES. 



(172.) But the evils of the German school of no- 

 menclature does not rest here ; inconvenient, perplexing, 

 and confounding as these minute divisions unquestion- 

 ably are, they are often rendered perfectly unintel- 

 ligible ; and this in two ways. First, almost every one 

 of these writers thinks himself at perfect liberty to set 

 aside the nomenclature of his predecessors, however un- 

 objectionable, and to make an effort to substitute a new 

 name of his own.* Hence every new system brings with 

 it a new set of names, not merely for the " newly es- 

 tablished" genera, but for the old ones also. Thus it 

 is that the nomenclature of erpetology is the most in- 

 constant and the most fluctuating of any in the whole 

 range of zoological science. In other branches it is 

 universally the custom to retain the original name of the 

 group, and to give new ones to its new divisions. Not 

 so, however, among the reptiles and the ruminants. 

 The authors we are speaking of think it as necessary to 

 overthrow an old name as to invent a new one. How 

 this will finally terminate is quite clear. The evil, if it 

 has not yet reached its greatest height, will soon do so. 

 Nomenclators will then find that the violation of those 

 wholesome rules, laid down by the fathers of science, 

 will no longer be tolerated ; they will perceive that their 

 own names are set aside with as little scruple as they 

 have striven to cancel the names of their predecessors. 

 The enormous multiplicity of synonyms, if not their 

 inextricable confusion, will render a selection absolutely 

 necessary ; and that selection will, of course, consist of 

 the best. It will at length be discovered in this, as in 

 all other things, that " honesty is the best policy." 

 They will again fall back on the only safe and sure rule 

 of proceeding, — the law of priority. Thus will hundreds 

 of useless names be swept even from our synonyms, 

 and the evil we have now complained of will finally 

 work its own cure. 



* In a recent " New Arrangement" of the Ruminating Animals, in one 

 of our periodicals, this has been done to an extent hardly to be believed. 

 These abortive attempts to obscure the high merits of Hamilton Smith, 

 whose knowledge of this order far exceeds that of any living zoologist, is 

 not very honourable to the state of science among us. 



