Page 4 September 1977 No. 234 NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES 
ked would remain 
the entire field of names where he worke 
suetr ened was before the world became Eocaerrc Ladostect acnlt tte 
zealous efforts. Thus split a few names 0 rey ee 
in the introduction to many of ese 
a 9 ein Sr bag sien sadly overnamed and a strict re- 
ks: "The present field has : 
vision calle, for the elimination of numerous earlier Seuran 7 7 ees 
in the course of the work, an even larger number of names is intro- 
duced, so the result is not always brilliant clarity. Often the 
name changes involved are more than on the specific level and new 
genera are introduced or formerly introduced subgenera are raised to 
genera. This type of splitting is even worse than mere splitting of 
species, since they involve a whole slew of changes: every species 
in the genus now has to get a new first name. The recent murex book 
is a good example of this. To sum up, one type of person who bene- 
fits from splitting, or lumping and splitting both, is, sadly, the 
student himself. I don't mean to imply that there is anything dis- 
honest in this type of work. What seems to happen is that when 
students concentrate on a single, sharply delimited area, some sort 
of bemusement takes place and very fine subtle differences, hardly 
visible to the outsider, become very clear and important to the en- 
grossed worker. Sterki with his Sphaeriids and Lea with his Naiads 
are good examples, and there are others. The student is not trying 
to fool anybody; he really sees the differences which remain obscure | 
to most of his readers. 
Others who benefit from excessive splitting are, as I pointed out in 
an article in NOTES 215, p. 4, October 1975, some unscrupulous shell 
dealers who of course can sell more shells if they have more names. 
And finally, as I also pointed out, there are the mihi itch people, 
who just live to introduce novelties valid or not, into the litera- 
ture, so that their names can appear in print for ever and aye. 
But the quarrels which arise from point three may not always remain 
unresolved. Recently studies have appeared based not on subjective 
morphological descriptions to establish new taxons, but on strict 
Statistical methods -- the computer more and more is taking over and 
when that speaks more and more people will learn to listen. Good 
examples of this is the study of the American land shell genus 
Triodopsis by Joseph Vagvolgyi in 1968 and the huge study of the 
freshwater mollusks of Canada by Arthur H. Clarke in 1973. In both 
these works difficult problems of nomenclature were treated by the 
statistical method and valid results were obtained. And there are 
other such studies. In addition there are Sophisticated biochemical 
and cytological studies, and studies dealing with antigens and chro- 
mosome counts and other, to me, incomprehensible devices. At present 
not everyone is happy with this new development, but the first steps 
have been taken and with time improvements will be made. Perhaps 
then in time the splitters and lumpers will lay down their arms and 
peace will descend on the world of nomenclatural zoology. 
I'd like to deal with two more Subjects briefly. Firs 
zoological name? Easy question. A abdtobioal Adan Sitdngterant of 
letters written together in a latinized form. Does it have to mean 
anything? Not necessarily, though it's nice if it does. Does it 
have to be pronounceable? Again, not necessarily. The names shells 
aan given are mainly meant to be written and not, primarily, meant 
0 be spoken. Thus even Russians and Japanese may not use their own 
alphabets when referring officially to these nomina; they must use 
