The Y0U8G HATtfBAMST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History. 



Part 100. APRIL, 1888. Vol. 9. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE .* 



By JOHN E. ROBSON. 



THE question of nomenclature is one of considerable importance, for 

 though it may be fairly argued that anything will do for a name, it is 

 very necessary that every one interested should know what is intended when 

 the name is used. That which we call a rose, by any other name might smell 

 as sweet, but if you called it a lily, and I called it a dahlia, and a third per- 

 son called it a violet, we would have very little idea of what each understood 

 the perfume to be, were we conversing about it. Nor is it enough that only 

 the people of one nation, speaking one language should use the same word to 

 express a particular species. Communication with other countries is so easy 

 now, and so universal, that it is necessary a name should be adopted that 

 distant correspondents can understand. We need to know the name used in 

 France or Germany, in Canada or the United States, in India, or in Australia. 

 Wherever, in short, there are naturalists, there is need for uniformity of 

 nomenclature. Hence the necessity for names being framed in a language 

 taught everywhere, and that being no longer used by a living race, ceases to 

 be liable to change. Hence, too, the necessity of their being some well 

 understood principle on which names should be applied. 



Prior to the time of Linnaeus, names were given somewhat indiscriminately, 

 and not unfrequently were but a brief description of the animal. Thus 

 Petiver, in 1717, called the Brimstone butterfly Papilio sulphur eus, and 

 Albin, in 1731, called the Black-veined White, Papilio albus venis nigris. 

 So too, in , a local writer called the Comma " The brown and gold but- 

 terfly with lacinated wings." When Latin was used, all butterflies were 

 Papilio, all moths Phalcena, Linnaeus devised a system of nomenclature that 



*Read before the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society, Liverpool, Feb. 

 27th, 1888, and published by request. 



