generic name. A member of the genus Spironema may be termed a spironema or a spironeme, a member of the genus Streptomyces a streptomyces or a streptomycete.
7. A genus includes usually several to many species; it is the name of a group of species. The expression "The genus Salmonella is . . ." or "Salmonella is . . ." should always be preferred to such ambiguous phrases as "The Salmonella group is."
In contrast to common, vernacular or casual names, the scientific name for each kind of organism is planned to be the same in all countries and in all languages. When a correct scientific name is used, no question should arise in any language as to what organism is intended. The names thus applied are supposed to conform to certain general rules.
International codes of nomenclature. In order that there be correct scientific names, it is essential that there be international agreement as to the rules governing their creation. Botanists and zoologists have met in numerous international congresses in which delegates were accredited from the great botanical and zoological societies, museums and educational institutions of the world. Codes of nomenclature, designed to tell how names of taxa should be published and to list the criteria of correctness, have been developed. These codes or lists of rules and recommendations are quite similar in essentials for botany and zoology, although they differ in some details.
The question arose in bacteriology: Are either or both of these codes satisfactory or adaptable to the use of microbiologists? Three views have been expressed by various writers. Some few suggested that the naming of bacteria cannot well conform to the approved international rules as their classification involves considerations not familiar to botanists and zoologists generally. The second group insisted that unicellular forms of life are neither plants nor animals, but Protista, and that taxonomic rules, etc., should be distinct for this group and coordinate with the corresponding rules for plants and for animals. The third view, more commonly expressed, was that the bacteria are sufficiently closely related to the plants and animals so that (in so far as they apply) the international agreements of the botanists (or zoologists) should be used as a basis for naming them.
International opinion on this topic was finally crystallized by resolutions adopted by the First International Congress of the International Society for Microbiology held in Paris in 1930. These resolutions, approved also by the plenary session of the International Society for Microbiology, were in part as follows:
"It is clearly recognized that the living forms with which the microbiologists concern themselves are in part plants, in part animals, and in part primitive. It is further recognized that in so far as they may be applicable and appropriate the nomenclatural codes agreed upon by International Congresses of Botany and Zoology should be followed in the naming of micro-organisms. Bearing in mind, however, the peculiarly independent course of development that bacteriology
