THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



69 



name he had adopted before, or that had been used by others, we may be 

 quite sure he had good reasons for the alteration, though we may not be able 

 now to discover what those reasons were. Can we not accept these changes, 

 because he thought them necessary, without insisting on knowing why ? 

 Surely the carefully revised completion of a great work, is a safer starting 

 point than an earlier and admittedly imperfect edition. What would we 

 think of the historical student who preferred an erroneous statement rather 

 than the correction of the error in a later edition ? For these or other 

 reasons, the 12th edition of the great work of Linnseus, was decided upon for 

 the starting point of our nomenclature. Mr. Kirby's great Catalogue of 

 Butterflies was based upon it in 1871, but when he published a supplement 

 in 1878, he had apparently altered his opinion, and the nomenclature of the 

 supplement is based on the 10th edition. Beyond this he declines to go at 

 present, but when once an established rule is broken who shall say what will 

 be the end. The change of date from 1767 to 1758 may not appear to be 

 material. Perhaps not so far as the Linnsean nomenclature goes, but it un- 

 fortunately lets in all names given by other writers during that period, in- 

 cluding for lepidopterists the works of Poda, Scopoli, &c. 



A further rule adopted by the British Association gives us what is known 

 as the Law of Priority, that is, that the name given first shall have pre- 

 ference over others given subsequently. 1 am not aware of any other 

 authoritative pronouncement on this point, than that of the British Associa- 

 tion, and it is quite clear that these rules must be read and interpreted as a 

 whole. The law of priority then as adopted by the British Association, 

 should be read in conjunction with the rule fixing the starting point at the 

 12th edition of the Sy sterna Naturse. If not where are we to stop. A 

 writer a few years ago, desirous of showing the absurdity of this constant 

 change, from the unearthing of old authors, said why not go back till we 

 call the mole cricket Gryllo-talpa, Aristotle. But why stop there? We read 

 in the second chapter of Genesis, that every beast of the field and every fowl 

 of the air was " brought to Adam to see what he would call them, and what- 

 soever Adam called any living creature that was the name thereof." Here is 

 a starting point that could not be got behind, and scripture authority for it 

 too. I would not deprive any one of the smallest bit of honour to which they 

 may be entitled, but I would seriously urge that the name of an animal is 

 given to it that it may be recognized, and not that its first describer may be 

 honoured to the injury of science. When a name is once thoroughly estab- 

 lished and in general use, to alter it is detrimental to every one, and the dig- 

 ging up of an earlier name, given by an obscure writer, whose works are not 

 forgotten, only because they were never known, is certainly considerably 



