NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 2 September 1977 Page 3 
new or even old names. And by doing this he t 
urned out not onl 
eager | oe cena Bay e150 what Pilsbry called ‘a nomenclatural 
peste S material was publish 
might like to hear how he worked. published in Latvia. You 
The whole trouble was based on the fact that S$ 
fields which he knew nothing about. It is Suvinew tue net Eapenen 
wants to make changes in names he should know something about what 
they stand for. Only experts in the field are knowledgeable enough 
to do this properly. Strand, however, was interested mainly in 
changing names and then adding his own to the new combination as the 
author, although he had nothing to do with the work that went into 
selecting and describing the new taxon, or even knew anything at all 
about the taxon. He was a bookworm and wormed his way though all 
sorts of published material with the one aim of finding names he 
could legally if not morally or even scientifically replace. The 
trouble was, of course, that many of the homonyms and synonyms and 
and otherwise defective names which Strand discovered had already 
been rejected earlier by experts as useless forms, not worth a new 
name. Thus the result of Strand's activity was that scholars had two 
useless names to contend with instead of one, that is: the original 
useless name and now the "replacement" for it by Strand. (I dis- 
cussed this gentleman in more detail in a short article in NOTES 218, 
p. 2, January 1976.) So far we have discussed, with a large digres- 
sion, points one and two. Now for point three: 
A third reason why names may be rejected and others substituted for 
them is that the author was wrong in assuming the specimen or speci- 
mens to be new. They may be mere color varieties of an already named 
species, or the juvenile stages, or it may well fall within the range 
of natural variations. This, the third reason, is the one that 
causes most of the mischief. In causes one and two (synonyms and 
homonyms) the decision is objective: the species is the same or the 
name is preoccupied and no one can raise a quarrel about that. But 
in the present case the decision has to be subjective. "It is, too, 
different. Any schoolboy" (Oh, the omniscient schoolboy!) "can see 
that it is different." "Wow! Any fool" (now the fool becomes omni- 
scient!) "can see that it's the same thing!" And so on and so on. 
It is sad but true that many of these debates have not to date been 
really resolved and some species parade around bearing two or even 
more than two names. 
At this point it is proper to introduce the two huge irreconcilable 
schools of malacologists: the splitters who give names to everything 
"different," and the lumpers who throw all sorts of names together 
and regard them as referring to a single species. Collectors look 
on with dismay as this unquenchable feud goes on, and are seized with 
paralyzing doubts when it comes to add a new item to their collection 
in order to complete -- or not complete -- the whole cycle of species 
found in their favorite family. One sad reason for this bitter feud 
is that there are personal reasons involved and it might be worth 
our while to think about the question: Who are the people who have 
more than a scientific interest in zoological names? 
First of all, sad to relate, comes the devoted, selfless scholar in 
his isolated laboratory, working indefatigably on his magnum opus, 
the goal and aim of his whole existence. The work is about done and 
really wouldn't it be a pity if after all this vast amount of sweat 
