who undertakes to restrict the comprehensive genus should be taken as the type. If no such restriction has taken place, the process of elimination, as laid down in Canon XXIII., may be applied. In both the latter cases, only those restrictions knowingly made should be considered.

The "Code agrees with most others in the rejection of “nomina nuda" (bare names introduced without explanation), but it differs from most others in regarding a "typonym" (or generic name established only by the indication of a typical species, and without diagnosis) as something more than a “bare name," and as therefore worthy of recognition. In this regard the "Code," justly or not, is most likely to receive criticism from workers in other fields. Most other departments of zoology have but little to do with "new genera," defined solely by the specification of a typespecies. These "typonyms" have been generally discarded as the useless product of lazy or "literary" naturalists on the general ground formulated by Professor Cope, that "science1 is science and

1 The following are Professor Cope's remarks on this point : "In the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, Professor Gill insists on the adoption of a generic name proposed by himself without description, in preference to a name proposed later, by another author, whose description contains some errors. The opposite course had been pursued by Professors Jordan and Gilbert, a circumstance which gives rise to the criticism in question. Professor Gill admits the facts to be as above stated, and thereupon makes the following remarks: 'What is the advantage of any description? According to the rules of the British and American Associations for the Advancement of Science, a description is necessary as the basis of permanent nomenclature, but like many of the other rules propounded in those codes, there is no

not literature," and that its names are meaningless except as "handles to facts." It is, however, apparently the general feeling of ornithologists, that names of this sort are too firmly fixed in their science to be now set aside. The Committee goes so far as to say (page 52) that "the mere mention of a type has been found to be often a better index to an author's meaning than is frequently

proper logical basis therefor.' Professor Gill then proceeds to make the usual statements about the inadequacy of the earlier generic descriptions, etc., a mode of reasoning generally resorted

to under similar circumstances.

"In taking his position, it is evident that Professor Gill and his school (for he is not alone in his views) have to contend not only with the wisdo. of the American and British Associations, but with that of the other bodies above mentioned. It would seem superfluous for us to defend a fortification so strongly held; but the heresy in question has had considerable run in America, and it is fitting that linen should be washed where it has been soiled. In brief, then, one reason why a description is necessary in adding a new name to scientific nomenclature is that science is science and not literature, - - a distinction occasionally lost sight of by a few writers on natural history. In other words, it deals with things, and not words; and the only connection words have with science is to represent things. As this cannot be done without a preliminary definition, names alone (nomina nuda) do not belong to science at all, but to the arts of composition and literature. Second, the inconvenience of the substitution of literary methods for scientific methods in scientific work is so great that scientists have felt compelled to protect themselves against these 'literary fellows.' By insisting on definitions, these gentlemen are placed in a somewhat embarrassing position. They do not wish to forego the pleasure of creating a new lexicon, but to compose a diagnosis is for them a very serious business. Literature, a critic says, deals with 'manner,' while science treats of 'matter,' and a diagnosis is a concentrated extract of matter. Between the two horns of the dilemma he will generally (not always, we are sorry to say) prefer the less conspicuous course, and abandon nomenclature as a profession." — American Naturalist, Nov. 8, 1881.

a diagnosis or a long description." This may be true; but it is equivalent to saying that if a given author will tell us what he is talking about, we can form a better idea of his meaning than we shall have if we listen to his statements. Possibly

the line must be drawn somewhere between the "typonym" and the "nomen nudum;" but both are valueless in fact, and it is a pity that any science should feel compelled to notice either.

Canons XLIV. and XLV., requiring absolute identification to secure priority, will offer some difficulties in practice; and it is in this regard that most fluctuations in nomenclature in future are likely to occur. Really "absolute" identification of descriptions is often difficult among birds, and in more obscure groups it becomes less and less easy of attainment.

With these exceptions, the rules of the "Code" seem to the present writer to be above cavil, and to fill the needs of other naturalists quite as well as they do those of ornithologists. With the exceptions of Canons XVII. and XVIII., which seem to him unwise, and which, in fact, he cannot use at all, and possibly that of Canon XLII. in so far as this recognizes the validity of typonyms, the entire "Code" must certainly be adopted by workers in ichthyology. I hope and believe that other branches of science will find these rules equally satisfactory, and that this may soon become in all important respects the code of nomenclature for zoology and botany as well as for American ornithology.

IT

AN ECCENTRIC NATURALIST.

T is now nearly seventy years since the first student of our Western fishes crossed the Falls of the Ohio and stood on Indiana soil. He came on foot, with a note-book in one hand and a hickory stick in the other, and his capacious pockets were full of wild-flowers, shells, and toads. He wore "a long, loose coat of yellow nankeen, stained yel lower by the clay of the roads, and variegated by the juices of plants." In short, in all respects of dress, manners, and appearance, he would be described by the modern name of "tramp." Nevertheless, no more remarkable figure has ever appeared in the annals of Indiana or in the annals. of science. To me it has always possessed a peculiar interest; and so, for a few moments, I wish to call up before you the figure of Rafinesque, with his yellow nankeen coat, "his sharp tanned face, and his bundle of plants, under which a pedler would groan," before it recedes into the shadows of oblivion.

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was born in Constantinople in the year 1784. His father was a French merchant from Marseilles doing business in Constantinople, and his mother was a German girl, born in Greece, of the family name of Schmaltz. Rafinesque himself, son of a Franco-Turkish father

and a Græco-German mother, was an American. Before he was a year old his life-long travels began, his parents visiting ports of Asia and Africa on their way to Marseilles. As a result of this trip, we have the discovery, afterward characteristically announced by him to the world, that "infants are not subject to sea-sickness." At Marseilles his future career was determined for him; or, in his own language: "It was among the flowers and fruits of that delightful region that I first began to enjoy life, and I became a botanist. Afterward, the first prize I received in school was a book of animals, and I am become a zoologist and a naturalist. My early voyage made me a traveller. Thus, some accidents or early events have an influence on our fate through life, or unfold our inclinations." 1

Rafinesque read books of travel, those of Captain Cook, Le Vaillant, and Pallas especially; and his soul was fired with the desire "to be a great traveller like them. . . . And I became such," he adds tersely. At the age of eleven he had begun an herbarium, and had learned to read the Latin in which scientific books of the last century were written. "I never was in a regular college," he says, "nor lost my time on dead languages; but I spent it in reading alone, and by reading ten times more than is read in the schools. I have undertaken to read the Latin and Greek, as

1 This and most of the other verbal quotations in this paper are taken from an Autobiography of Rafinesque," of which a copy exists in the Library of Congress. A few quotations have been somewhat abridged.