142 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
says, " It is a sin and a shame, a reproach to science and scientific 
men, that the time of master specialists, every available moment 
of which is needed for science, should be taken up by utterly vain 
questions like this." Malacologists are not alone in suffering 
these miseries. Professor Herbert Osborn, an eminent ento- 
mologist, in an address before the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science says, "No taxonomist should have the 
heart, and if possible should not have the power or the oppor- 
tunity by shifting a genus or rearranging species to foist upon a 
patient world the necessity of adopting a new combination in 
the name of the common species universally referred to in anat- 
omy, medicine, agriculture or other lines of applied science. I 
have elsewhere hinted at the discouraging nature of these nomen- 
clatural acrobatics to the student entering on zoological work. 
I have good reason to believe that many promising and brilliant 
young workers have been disgusted and drawn to other fields 
of effort because of the complexities and apparently senseless 
chaos involved in the synonymy of many of our common animals. 
Think of thirty-six different specific combinations for the oyster- 
shell scale (that is thirtj^-six the last time I had occasion to note 
the number) or twenty-six for the screw worm fly." 
These protests and complaints are not of recent origin. S. P. 
Woodward, the author of the best manual on Mollusca ever 
published, writes seventy years ago, " Multiplication of synonyms 
having made it desirable to place the authority after each name, 
another source of evil has arisen ; for several naturalists (fancying 
that the genus-maker, and not the species-maker, should enjoy this 
privilege) have altered or divided almost every genus, and placed 
their signatures as the authorities for names given half a century 
or a century before, by Linnaeus or Bruguiere. . . . The 
authorities appended to scientific names are supposed to indicate 
an amount of work done in the determination and description of 
the species; when, therefore, the real author's name is suppressed, 
and a spurious one substituted, the case looks very like an attempt 
to obtain credit under false pretenses." 
Dr. A. A. Gould, one of our most eminent authorities on the 
subject in a letter to me in 1864, in regard to generic distinctions 
being based on the shell alone, says, "Messrs. Lea and Tryon 
are trying their hand at making new genera of Melania on the 
