Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/456

424 form. It should surely be the object of an International Code to interfere with individual liberty as little as possible, and to protect accepted names from any change that can be avoided. But in correcting names which may be considered to offend against grammar or philology, more inconvenience than advantage is likely to arise. A longer name, as in the examples quoted, will often have to be substituted for a shorter one. The practical nuisance of this will be well understood by those who have to write labels for small bottles and glass slips. It is also contrary to the tendency of language, which is constantly condensing instead of expanding its forms—reducing, for instance, the five syllables of "Mea domina" to the monosyllabic "Ma'am," or "Mum," or "M'm." The zoologist need not encourage the geographer to change back Brighton into Brighthelmstone. By correction a name will sometimes receive a different initial, as in the change of Oplophorus to Hoplophorus or of Upogebia to Hypogebia, which is apt to be very confusing when an index has to be consulted. The principle of priority is weakened when the original form of a name is relinquished not in the interests of science, but of scholarship. On the other hand, it is so easy to let the names alone, carrying with them their small but interesting touches of autobiography, and no possible harm is done if we do leave to the polished scholar some little occasion for chuckling over us untutored sons of science.

In section III., the second rule begins by declaring that "Specific names are of three kinds: a. Adjectives which must agree grammatically with the generic name." On this it may be diffidently asked whether it would not be simpler to regard all generic names in zoology as masculine? This would avoid any necessity for changing the termination of a specific name on its transfer from one genus to another. It would put an end to a frequent confusion arising between Latin feminine and Greek neuter forms which happen to have the same vowel-ending. The most sensitive ear need not be offended, since Agricola, Aurelia, Cyphostoma, under the present rule, require an adjective respectively in the masculine, the feminine, the neuter. An animal does not become more one gender than another because of its name, and the grammar of the Greeks has wisely recognized what is called "the construction according to the sense."