No. 385.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 71 
bility of names is the tendency, on the part of a few wiseacres, to 
change names to suit their ideas of correct classical form, often to 
the extent of a radical transformation of an old name into a prac- 
tically new one. It seems, for purposes of convenience, far better 
to extend the law of priority to the form of names as well as to the 
names themselves, since it is coming to be more and more generally 
accepted that a name is merely a convenient handle to a fact and 
need have no necessary significance. While it is desirable that all 
new names should be correctly formed, it is not necessary nor even 
desirable that old names should be discarded on account of faulty 
construction, nor even emended to suit our ideas of propriety. 
Mr. Thomas divides the Rodents, as has long been customary, 
into two suborders — Simplicidentati and Duplicidentati, the latter 
consisting of the Hares and Picas, and the former including the rest 
of the order. The Simplicidentati are divided into five superfamily 
groups — Anomaluri, Sciuromorpha, Aplodontia, Myomorpha, Hys- 
tricomorpha. The families admitted in addition to those recognized 
by Alston are Bathyergidæ, Heteromyide, Erethizontide, and Pede- 
tide. The American Porcupines are for the first time distinguished 
as a family from those of the Old World. References are given to 
the place of original description of the genera, but not for the higher 
groups; subgenera and synonyms are not included in the list. 
Dr. Palmer’s paper admirably supplements Mr. Thomas’s, inas- 
much as it gives references for the higher groups and includes sub- 
genera and synonyms, The references here given for the higher 
groups are a great convenience, as they are generally omitted; a 
glance at Dr. Palmer’s list, however, shows which among several 
names for the same group has priority. Dr. Palmer’s paper is 
further “an attempt to bring together a// the names, generic and 
subgeneric, ever proposed for Rodents.” Reference to the place 
of publication is omitted, only the name of the author, the date of 
publication, and the type species, whenever determinable, being 
given, or in the absence of a type species all the species originally 
referred to the genus. Great care has been taken to give the actual 
date of publication, as distinguished from the ostensible or apparent 
date, wherever possible, as is the case in a large number of instances. 
According to Dr. Palmer, the present list contains more than 600 
i i ) than twice the number given 
generic and subgeneric names, or more 
by Marschall in 1873, and comprises about “15 per cent of the 
entire number of generic and subgeneric names ever proposed for 
mammals.” The arrangement is strictly alphabetical as regards not 
