CANONS OF SYSTEMATIC NOMENCLATURE FOR THE HIGHER GROUPS

Extract

Several years ago, the American Association for the Advancement of Science appointed a committee to reconsider the canons of biological nomenclature, and to report whether, with the growth of science, they requrired any additions or alterations. No report has yet been made, nor, so far as we are aware, is any likely to be presented, until the subject is again brought prominently forrvard and new instructions given. Professor A. E. Verrill has since repubiished the Revised Rules of Zoological Nomenclature adopted by the British Association for the Advancement of science in 1865, and has accompanied them by a few apt comments; in England, Mr. W. F. Kirby, in a paper read before the Linnean Society of London, has called attention to the extensive changes which a strict adherence to the laws of priority would cause in the generic nomenclature of butterflies; and quite recently has put the same into practice in his catalogue of these insects.