524 REMARKS UPON ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



British Insects/* by doing which he has excited the wrath of its 

 author. Now., as the party who affects to be aggrieved in this case, is 

 notoriously addicted to name-making, and publishes the names he 

 makes for the use and benefit of the public, it follows that, like the 

 words in Johnson's or Walker's Dictionary, they become public property. 

 Surely, then, he can have no just cause for complaint, if any one 

 should collect and arrange them in any form which he may think fit. 

 It is rather strange, indeed, for a nomenclator to object to the pub- 

 lication of the terms he has made, in any other work but his own, and 

 particularly, as his own catalogue clearly shows, that he himself did 

 not scruple to copy the names contained in the works of other ento- 

 mologists, as, for instance, the Ichneumonologia of Gravenhorst, which 

 has evidently much added to the extent of his work. If every 

 nomenclator were to deny the world the free use of the terms intro- 

 duced by him into science, where should we look for these useful and 

 grand compilations, known by the name of Encyclopaedias, or for the 

 less extensive compilations of Turton and Blumenbach ? However, as 

 the former edition of the " Systematic Catalogue," and also of the 

 " Guide to an Arrangement of British Insects," both professed to 

 supply the student with the various generic and specific names, I will 

 just take the liberty of pointing out the deficiencies, which will give the 

 reader some idea of the importance of our possessing a work embracing 

 all that these contain, and furnishing all that they ought to have 

 contained. When I some time since commenced the dry and tedious 

 task of forming a Dictionary of Entomology, I detected in the course of 

 transposing the terms from the above " Catalogue" and u Guide," into 

 alphabetical order, several mistakes and omissions in both, and dis- 

 covered that many names which were contained in the one were not 

 contained in the other, which was almost an inexcusable fault, as the 

 editions in question were published about the same time. Of genera, 

 whose names commence with the letter A alone, there were no less 

 than fourteen omitted in the " Catalogue" which were to be found in 

 the " Guide ;" while, on the other hand, the number of those com- 

 mencing with the same letter omitted in the " Guide," but contained 

 in the u Catalogue," was much more considerable, treble the number ! 

 There being so many under letter A, how many omissions may we not 

 reasonably conceive there were of other words commencing with the 

 remaining letters of the alphabet. Both of these works, however, it 

 must be admitted, are of very great assistance to the entomologist. 

 But we want books of a very different and more instructive kind. 



