ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE.
REMARKS ON THE PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL CODE.
By Rev. Thomas R.R. Stebbing, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.Z.S.
Many of the proposals of the International Commission[1] on this subject are so admirably drawn that they have a fair chance of commanding universal acceptance. On some of them public opinion is authorized to differ, since the members of the Commission are themselves not unanimous. By a singular policy at Cambridge the Report was submitted to the Zoological Congress, and in the same breath withdrawn from discussion. Debate was closured before it had begun. This tantalizing course was due apparently to some dread of starting an interminable controversy. It is easy no doubt to have too much of a good thing, but nothing is an unintellectual alternative to too much.
The proposals are divided into rules and recommendations. Nevertheless several recommendations are interpolated among the rules.
On the eighth rule of section I. the members of the Commission are divided. Three of them say, "All grammatical errors must be corrected; at the same time hybrid names are to be retained without emendation." For example, they "correct"
Cuterebra to Cutiterebra, Glossiphonia to Glossosiphonia. But two of the members propose the following form for this rule:
"Barbarisms and solecisms shall be construed (under B. § 3 k) as arbitrary combinations of letters, and cannot be rejected or emended because of faulty construction. Hybrid names are to be avoided, but when once published are not to be rejected."
The minority, it will be seen, include in their rule a recommendation. Apart from that, theirs is by far the more desirable
- ↑ See the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' ser. 7, vol. ii. p. 181 (1898), and the Report submitted to the International Zoological Congress at Cambridge last August.
