106 



The Naturalist. 



the time full of zeal, but young and without experience, I did not 

 perceive, among other things, the essential difference between a name 

 and a definition. However misleading or inapplicable a name may 

 be, it is simply a name, and should never be confounded with a 

 definition. A definition — or, in scientific terms, a diagnosis — must 

 always be exact, or it ceases to be what it professes. I can fully enter 

 into your contributor's feelings, for there was a time when I felt 

 exactly as he feels. But further acquaintance with the subject has 

 made me, I hope, a wiser man. I venture in all humility to suggest 

 for his perusal the discussion of the subject which he may find, if he 

 has access to the volumes, in the Analyst " of many years ago, and 

 in the " Magazine of Natural History," wherein the late Rev. Hugh 

 Edwin Strickland shewed the incontestible (as it appears to me) 

 superiority of those principles of nomenclature which were afterwards 

 embodied in the code published by the British Association. This 

 code has been often printed, yet I am well aware of the fact that a 

 comparatively small number of the zoologists of the present day are 

 acquainted with it. There are men who have objected to this code, 

 that it is hard to apply. I have yet to see any code that is not so, 

 and I am sure that one founded on Mr. Bairstow's views would, from 

 the beginning, be beset by so many difficulties that it could never be 

 made to work. 



Magdalene College, Cambridge, 

 3rd December, 1876. 



SCIENTIFIC NOMENCLATURE. 

 By H. F. Parsons, M.D. 



Your correspondent, Mr. S. D. Bairstow, would find that to alter 

 well established names with the view of reforming Scientific 

 Nomenclature, would cause far more confusion than it would cure. 

 Scientific nomenclature is already overburdened with synonyms ; for 

 instance, the common bluebell is, in different books, variously termed 

 Hyacmthus nonscripttis, AgrapJiis nutans^ Endymion nutans^ and Scilla 

 nutans ; nor is bluebell itself free from ambiguity, for the " Bluebells 

 of Scotland " are Campanula rotundifolia. 



Names are marks set upon objects to distinguish them from others, 

 and the chief requisite of a scientific terminology is that each species 

 should have a single name which should distinguish it from all other 

 species. The Linnsean binary system of nomenclature also indicates 



