198 
GREY PHALAROPE. 
better than all the rest, we are willing to admit, — but that he 
had no right to give it a new name we shall boldly maintain, 
not only on the score of expediency, but of justice. If the 
right to change be once conceded, there is no calculating the 
extent of the confusion in which the whole system of nomen- 
clature will be involved ; the study of methodical natural his- 
tory is sufficiently laborious, and whatever will have a ten- 
dency to diminish this labour, ought to meet the cordial sup- 
port of all those who are interested in the advancement of the 
natural sciences. 
The study of natural history,” says the present learned 
president of the Linnsean Society, “ is, from the multitude of 
objects with which it is conversant, necessarily so encumbered 
with names, that students require every possible assistance to 
facilitate the attainment of those names, and have a just right 
to complain of every needless impediment. Nor is it allowable 
to alter such names, even for the better. In our science, the 
names established throughout the works of Linnaeus are become 
current coin, nor can they be altered without great inconveni- 
ence.”* 
That there is a property in names, as well as in things, will 
not be disputed ; and there are few naturalists who would not 
feel as sensibly a fraud committed on their nomenclature as on 
their purse. The ardour with which the student pursues his 
researches, and the solicitude which he manifests in promul- 
gating his discoveries under appropriate appellations, are proofs 
that at least part of his gratification is derived from the sup- 
posed distinction which a name will confer upon him ; deprive 
him of this distinction, and you inflict a wound upon his self- 
love which will not readily be healed. 
To enter into a train of reasoning to prove that he who first 
describes and names a subject of natural history, agreeable to 
the laws of systematic classification, is for ever entitled to his 
name, and that it cannot be superseded without injustice, would 
An Introduction to Physiological and Systematical Botany^ chap. 12. 
