412 



Mr. Strickland's Commentary 



u the inflexible law of priority." There is reason to hope that 

 naturalists are daily becoming more convinced of the value 

 and excellence of this law. So long as authors adopt one 

 name in preference to another merely on account of its supe- 

 rior euphony of sound, or applicability of meaning, the no- 

 menclature of science must vary with the individual taste and 

 opinion of each author. But when we adopt priority of pub- 

 lication as our rule, we are guided not by opinion but by fact. 

 The particular date at which any genus or species first re- 

 ceives a name is an irrevocable matter of history ; and all na- 

 turalists who adopt the first name that was given to the ob- 

 ject, must coincide in their nomenclature. And although the 

 first names that were given are not always the best, yet surely 

 the establishment of an uniform and permanent language 

 among naturalists of all nations is an object of far greater va- 

 lue than the employment of names which, though more elegant 

 and expressive, want the authority which time alone imparts, 

 and vary with the tastes and caprices of men. The law of pri- 

 ority has also the merit of being the only one which is just, 

 as it preserves and honours the terms employed by original 

 discoverers in preference to those introduced by later critics ; 

 and it also has the advantage of reminding us of the date at 

 which any species was discovered or group defined. In the 

 application of this law Mr. Gray has acted with the strictest 

 impartiality, though in one or two respects he seems to have 

 somewhat departed from its spirit in adhering to its letter. 

 In the first place I entirely agree with the Prince of Musi- 

 gnano, that " in no case do I consider it right to take any of 

 the names of the older authors in preference to those given by 

 Linnaeus. We owe this compliment to that great man ; and 

 besides it is not fair to assume that our Binomial system of 

 nomenclature was established before his time, because we 

 meet with a few instances capable of being referred to the in- 

 valuable principle which he was the first to generalize and 

 render universal." With regard to specific names then, we 

 cannot carry back the law of priority beyond the date of the 

 12th edition of the e Systema Naturae,' and we ought not to 

 set aside the earliest specific name given to a species after 

 that date in. favour of one accidentally binomial in form which 

 was given before it. Thus, for instance, the Hirundo chalybea 

 of Gmelin was termed by Brisson H. cayanensis ; but we do 

 not adopt the latter name, because Brisson had evidently no 

 idea of a regular binomial nomenclature like that of Linnaeus, 

 and generally employed a sentence instead of a word to desig- 

 nate a species. 



Th e same principle applies to the priority of generic names 



