864 The American Naturalist. [September, 
be grave doubts of the advisability of changing family names whenever 
more brief or euphonious substitutes are offered. True, the winding 
polysyllables seem a useless infliction, and doubtless frighten many 
short-breathed people away from scientific study ; but if there had been 
no dodging on “ Craspedosomatidae,” it might have stood as a warning 
which should have saved us such names as Paradoxosomatide, Archi- 
spirostreptus, and Pseudonannolenide. These are longer than the pre- 
Linnean descriptions, and may further endanger the popularity of the 
binomial system, already threatened in other ways. 
Let us hope that before the nomenclatorial agitation entirely sub- 
sides, we may have a rule limiting scientific names to reasonable length. 
Their authors might then have the time and strength to make a service- 
able description, possibly a plate! If this suggestion is not received 
favorably by the “ cloth” it will be quite easy to secure enough “lay” 
votes to pass it by large majority. —O. F. CooK. 
On the Generic Names Strigamia, Linotænia and Scolio- 
planes.—The genus Strigamia, was proposed by Gray, in 1842, in the 
article by T. Rymer Jones, in Todd’s Cyclopeedia, as cited in the pre- 
ceding note. The description is as follows: 
“ Gen. H. Strigamia ( Geophilus). Eyes none, antenne 14-jointed, 
moniliform, rather elongate. Body linear, depressed. Feet, fifty pairs 
or more.” 
It is significant that Strigamia stands as the fourth genus of the Sco- 
lopendridæ, the other three being Lithobius, Scolopendra and Cryp- 
tops. The most natural inference from the above quotation is that 
Gray for some reason preferred Strigamia to Geophilus. This seems to 
have been Latzel’s idea, for he places Strigamia Gray, as a doubtful 
synonym under Geophilus. Whatever may have been the intention of 
Gray, however, there would seem to be an insurmountable obstacle to 
the use of his name, in the fact that he published no species under it, 
the case not being parallel with that of Fontaria. Neither is there any 
mention of a species of Strigamia in what purport to be complete lists 
of the Chilopoda of the British Museum. Indeed, in the list of 1856, 
in the preparation of which Gray himself assisted, Strigamia appears 
only as a synonym of Geophilus! It should have rested quietly there, 
but names were too scarce, and so Strigamia was again brought out by 
Wood, in 1865, and applied to Geophilus Newport, not Leach, The 
type of Geophilus Leach, is carpophagus, but this species had been se- 
questrated by Newport and put into a new genus, Arthronomalus, leav- 
ing Geophilus as the name of another genus whose type was acuminatus, 
