14 
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE 
NOTE. 
The questions with which the working Naturalist is most frequently 
brought face to face — and in the decision of which so much trouble is 
experienced and such diverse opinions are elicited — are chiefly those 
which involve the right of any one of several names to be considered as 
properly proposed and entitled to take precedence of others, provided its 
priority in time of application be established. 
The rule that names (otherwise unexceptionable) which are prior in 
date, are to be accepted in nomenclature to the exclusion of all others, is 
conceded by all naturalists. 
The rules recommended by the Committee on Nomenclature of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, have been generally 
adopted : though in certain details they are regarded by many naturalists 
as defective. Nevertheless they have largely contributed to that uni- 
formity which is so desirable in the matter of nomenclature. 
It has been thought that a similar recommendation on the part of the 
American Association might reach many who are not conversant with the 
British rules and tend to produce in the works of the rising generation 
of American Naturalists a similarly beneficial agreement. 
The differences of opinion which have arisen, are chiefly in matters of 
detail and intrinsically of very slight importance. 
One of the most serious in its effect upon nomenclature is that in regard 
to what names shall be considered as really binomial ; another as to what 
is necessary to definitely establish a name in order that if prior to any 
other it may be accepted as properly proposed; and most of all as to the 
date to be adopted as that of the beginning of binomial nomenclature. 
This latter question, as to facts, on the authority of De Candolle, stands 
as follows : 
A series of rules for nomenclature was to some extent foreshadowed by 
Linnaeus in his Fundamenta Entoniologia of 1736. These rules were first 
definitively proposed in the Philosophia botanica , which appeared in 1751. 
These rules, however, related almost exclusively to the generic name or 
nomen genericum. In 1745, he had employed for the first time a specific 
name ( nomen triviale ) composed of one w T ord, in contradistinction to the 
polynomial designation of a species ( nomen specificum ) which was pre- 
viously the rule among naturalists. That which now seems the most 
happy and important of the Linnaean ideas, the restriction of the specific 
name as now understood, seems to have been for a long time only an ac- 
cessory matter to him, as the nomina trivialia are barely mentioned'ln his 
rules up to 1765. 
In 1753, in the Incrementa botanices , while expatiating on the reforms 
which he had introduced into the scieuce, he does not even mention the 
binominal nomenclature. In the 8 y sterna Naturae , Ed. X, 1758, for the 
first time the binominal system is consistently applied to all classes of 
animals and plants (though it had been partially adopted by him as early 
