Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/334

326 an actual case. Last year two naturalists presented to the French Academy of Sciences an account of their investigations into the perivisceral fluid of Phymosoma. The mention of perivisceral fluid indicates that Phymosoma is an animal and that it possesses viscera; also that it is not a fossil. But neither the title nor the paper itself gives any further hint as to the zoological position of the creature. We must, therefore, have recourse to some work of reference, such as Scudder's 'Nomenclator,' and here we find Phymosoma given as the name of a sea-urchin, better known as Cyphosoma. This may be the reason why the paper in question has been indexed in a well-known bibliography under the head of Echinoderms. But on inquiring further into the matter we find, first, that the sea-urchin Phymonoma is only known as a fossil, or if it does occur in the recent state, it is by no means so common as readily to afford material for biological investigation; secondly, that the phenomena observed are not such as we have hitherto been taught to associate with the Echinoidea. These considerations, while not excluding the possibility that the Phymosoma of the paper is a sea-urchin, arouse our suspicion. But what is to be done? We ransack the works of reference in a great library, we appeal to our zoological friends, specialists in various branches, professors, bibliographers. In vain. The resources of civilization appear exhausted, and we. . . . 'Why on earth don't you write to the authors?' says some superior practical person. My dear sir, are you not aware that the address of a scientific writer is never affixed to his publications, that if he is a Frenchman with a common name his initials are invariably replaced by M., and that, with all respect to Messrs. Cassino, Friedländer and other benefactors of scientific humanity, it is still as difficult to hunt down a budding author as to solve any other problem of scientific nomenclature? Before risking a letter that, even should it arrive, may elicit no reply, it occurs to us that the authors, being French, are likely to follow the names used by Prof. Edmond Perrier in his large 'Traité de zoologie.' Unfortunately this work, since it is still in progress, has as yet no index. However, by dint of wading through the probable groups of animals, we are at last rewarded by finding Phymosoma among the Gephyreans. No doubt a specialist on that small section of the worms will think all this fuss highly absurd, for the name Phymosoma is naturally quite familiar to him. So much the worse, since no Gephyrean has a right to it. True it is that A. de Quatrefages, in 1865, obscurely printed the name Phymosomum (not Phymosoma), as applicable to a subgenus of the Gephyrean Sipunculus; but the name Phymosoma was proposed for the sea-urchin by d'Archiac and Haime, in 1853. If both names be objected to on the score of etymology, and the more correct form Phymatosoma be suggested, confusion is certain to arise with a name given to a beetle in 1831 by Laporte and Brullé, viz., Phymatisoma, which is, in fact, though erroneously, frequently written Phymatosoma. At every turn, then, there is risk of that very confusion which it is the object of scientific nomenclature to eliminate.

Now it is distinctly to be understood that this narration has not exaggerated the facts one jot, and it is clear that the experience may have been shared by many others. All this loss of time, vexation of spirit and promulgation of actual error might have been spared by the insertion of the single word 'Gephyréen' in the title, or, at least, by some intimation in the paper itself. Justly then do we stigmatize heedlessness in such matters as an agent in the retardation of science.

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