12 A FIRST CHAPTER 
first a general, or generic, name, which should indicate the group to 
which the animal] belonged, the second a special or specific name, to ap- 
ply to that animal alone, this method of naming animals and plants 
being known as the binomial (two-name) system of nomenclature. So 
the lion became Felts leo, the lion cat (the adjective comes last in Latin); 
the tiger Felzs tegris, the tiger cat; and the leopard Felis pardalis, the 
spotted cat, the common name felzs indicating that they were of the same 
genus or kind. 
While zoological names thus began in descriptions, they have ended . 
by becoming merely convenient handles by which to lay hold of any 
particular animal; so at present names do not necessarily have any 
meaning, or contain any reference to the characteristics of the animal 
to which they are applied, although customarily they do so. It is very 
much the same with our own names. Time was, long ago to be sure, 
when the names of people were descriptive, just as they are even now 
among Indians and savage races. But Black, White, Strong, Smith, 
and Carpenter have ceased to mean anything save that their bearer is a 
member of some particular family who has his own special name also. 
But, it is frequently asked, why can’t animals have common as well as 
scientific names? One reason why many animals have no common names 
is that they are not commonly known, but a better reason is that there 
are not enough names to go around. While our largest dictionaries 
claim to define only some 300,000 words, more than 350,000 species of 
animals, great and small, have already been described, and at the present 
rate of discovery the number will probably reach 500,000 within twenty 
years. Therefore, as they are not commonly known, it is obviously 
impossible to have a common name for each one, and so they are recorded 
only by scientific names. | 
It must also be remembered that a large proportion of these scientific 
names seem strange and formidable only because they are unfamiliar; 
and those that have worked their way into our acquaintance, such as 
elephant, rhinoceros and boa constrictor, do not seem at all strange. 
Some may also complain that scientific names are being constantly 
changed, but this is true only to a limited extent, and is due partly to a 
few individuals who decline to be guided by any rules, and partly to the 
working of what is called the law of priority—the rule that the specific 
name first applied to any animal is the one that shall be used. As some 
of these names first appear in rare or little known books, it often hap- 
pens that a name long current is found to be antedated by another, 
and must, therefore, be changed. 
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